


Baby You Should Stick Around

by Febricant, neenya



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Art, Kid Fic, M/M, Yes Really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-01
Updated: 2014-09-28
Packaged: 2018-02-15 17:11:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 33,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2236926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Febricant/pseuds/Febricant, https://archiveofourown.org/users/neenya/pseuds/neenya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If somebody had told Steve he and Bucky would end up raising Bucky's clone as their son, he'd probably have- wait, no, he wouldn't have done anything, because nobody would ever have said that. </p><p>And yet. Here they are.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Baby You Should Stick Around](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11309421) by [Sinitsyna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sinitsyna/pseuds/Sinitsyna)



> Neenya asked me what color hair their child would have. Thirty thousand words, many hours and endless conversations later, this is the result. 
> 
> Thank you Neenya.

6.

Steve would have to be a much better liar than he is to claim that they don’t have bad days.

It happens to turn out that Bucky is also a terrible liar; sometimes Steve watches him try and realises all over again that it’s transparent, the way he’s never quite sure what to do with his face, the way he taps his lips with his left fingers as though the metal will guide his words.

Steve can’t help finding it weirdly comforting to know that when he asks Bucky how he is he might say “fine” and mean it, or he might be telling an outright lie, but they both know Steve can tell.

A year. It still feels unreal sometimes, intangible and precarious. It’s been months and months of slow going, months of waking up in the middle of the night sure it’s all some kind of horrible dream, reaching for someone in the darkness he never expects to find, but-

Bucky rolls out of bed, rolls his shoulders back, right-left, joints cracking beneath the skin.

“Mornin’” Steve yawns. “Sleep okay?”

Bucky looks back over his right shoulder, hair a tangled mess around his face. “Yeah,” he says. “You?”

“Yeah.”

They’re not lying. It’s good.

Which is, predictably, when everything goes to shit.

Steve’s phone rings. He reaches for it, answers it by rote. Anyone who has this number is someone he trusts. “Rogers.”

“Hope I’m not waking you, Cap.” Nick Fury always sounds like he’s about to deliver bad news. It’s because he always is. “Have you got a minute?”

Steve looks at Bucky, frozen halfway to tying his hair up, eyes narrow. “Well, I was gonna water my plants...”

“About that.” Fury doesn’t sound like he’s in a mood to joke. “Is Barnes with you?”

“I’m gonna put you on speaker,” Steve tells him, putting the phone down. Bucky presses back in next to him, skin to skin. Steve wishes he could take a second to prepare, but then, that’s just not what their lives are like. It would be too much to ask.

“Morning, Sergeant.”

“I’m retired,” Bucky snaps. “Spit it out.”

Fury pauses. The line is too good for static, but Steve imagines he can hear it anyway, the ghost of a breath travelling through the air. “Gentlemen, I have some information I’d like to share with you. Would you mind opening the door?”

-

Bucky’s left hand slams down flat on the file. Steve hopes, distantly, that he hasn’t dented the table, but truthfully the majority of his thoughts are some variation on _how is this possible. What kind of-_

“No.” Bucky’s voice is flat, flat, flat, mouth a straight, thin line. “It’s not me.”

Nick settles back in his chair, hands laced over his belly. He looks not unlike a reclining predator, leaning back for a better look at the field. “I never said he was. I said we discovered a program designed to try to replicate the serum’s effects on a complete organism.” He taps the file under Bucky’s hand, single eye steady. Serious. “I know it’s not you. Leaving aside the nature-nurture thing, a clone still wouldn’t be you.” He grins unhappily. He probably thinks it isn't threatening but Steve would disagree. “Think of it as having a much younger twin.”

Steve swallows, feels himself swallowing. It’s not unlike the feeling of falling, this kind of revelation. The fact that there are still people in the world willing to do anything to make weapons, including- including- “Bucky, are you-”

“I’m fine,” Bucky lies. “Fucking peachy.”

He gets up, shrugs his shoulders back, and disappears out the window.

Fury looks over the table, over the little mountain range of creased paper between them. “You can meet him, if you want.”

“‘S not up to me,” Steve says, looking at the fire escape, at the points of Bucky’s elbows draped over the railing.

Fury sighs, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. “I was asking both of you.”

Steve isn’t sure what to do with the surge of anger in his chest. There’s nobody here to hit, nothing here to fight except the rising tide of life pulling all the progress they’ve made since last winter back out to sea. “Why now, Nick? You couldn’t give us just a little more time? He’s not-”

“He can hear you,” Bucky says, lighting up one of the interminable cigarettes he’s hidden all over the apartment. “Just ‘cause I don’t wanna talk don’t mean I’m fuckin’ deaf.” His accent is back, strong and clear and not often a good sign.

Steve swallows, pulling the file in closer. The kid in the photos looks gaunt, wary. He looks exactly like Bucky used to, dark hair thick and unruly, eyes too big for his face. “He’s- he’s six years old, how did we not-”

“I wanna meet him.” Bucky’s voice comes out low, breath and smoke misting together in the cold as he leans over the street behind their apartment, flicking the half-smoked butt away, cherry red in the air before it dies.

Nick looks at Steve, patient and serious. Steve kind of wants to laugh at the very idea that he’d ever step in the way of something Bucky wants badly enough to demand like this. “Yeah,” he says, “of course.”

“I’ll make the call.” Fury leaves the file, when he goes.

Steve can’t help but think maybe he sounded a little bit pleased. It’s something to think about.

-

“Hey.”

Bucky is still on the fire escape, steadily making his way through a pack of Reds that Steve doesn’t remember seeing him smoke before. He’s tried all sorts of brands though, tried all sorts of food and drinks and clothes. He won’t let anyone near him with scissors and stares at himself in the mirror for an hour before he shaves and doesn’t need glasses but wears them anyway because he spent so many years thinking of a visor as protection.

Steve knows him pretty well, he’d say. Maybe Bucky would disagree, but he hasn’t so far.

“Hey,” Bucky replies, offering him the pack.

“I don’t smoke anymore,” Steve reminds him gently. “Those things never did much for asthma anyway. Turns out they kill ya.”

“Figured I’d offer anyway.” Bucky pulls out another one and lights it off the butt of the one he’s already smoking. Steve doesn’t comment on it. It probably won’t hurt him, but even if it would, he’s an adult. Steve has no interest in making his decisions for him.

“Thanks.” Steve settles back against the rusty grating of their little ersatz balcony, looking out at the roofs. “How’re you doing?”

Bucky smokes in silence for a while, eyes unfocused. “I dunno,” he says finally. His right hand is going white in the November air, but he doesn’t seem to care. Cold doesn’t seem to touch him, any more than it touches Steve. He feels it, but it’s not a danger the way it used to be.

“Yeah.” Steve pulls his sleeves over his fingers anyway. “Me either.”

Bucky blows smoke out his nose, left arm resting across his knees, all of him tucked-in and guarded. “I don’t remember them doing- I just remember tests. They were always taking... parts of me.” The fingers of his left hand flex, unconscious punctuation. Steve has never asked how they did it, made something inhuman like that and attached it to him. He doesn’t really need to.

“You don’t have to talk about it.” Steve doesn’t want to make it worse by prying, even if he wants to know, always and desperately. They both have so much missing, even if what Steve lost was just time, hardly comparable to the erosion Bucky has been slowly picking up the pieces of. “We can always call it off.”

“Like hell.” Bucky bares his teeth, left hand clenching on his right knee. “He’s just a kid.”

Steve knows him well enough to know that what he doesn’t say is always as important as what he does. That hasn’t changed. It’s kind of comforting, in its way, even if it’s for such different reasons now. “Kids are tough,” Steve says, thinking of a boy with blood on his teeth always pulling him out of harm’s way.

“No,” Bucky says quietly. “They just get that way.”

Steve can’t lie to him, any more than Bucky can to him in turn. He gently drapes an arm around him instead, breathing in smoke over cold city air.

-

Bucky has his glasses on when Fury comes back the next day. He’s glaring at the far wall, gaze fixed on a spot next to the door.

Steve slides down next to him by the skirting board, careful not to disturb his vantage point. “Here,” he says, handing him a smoothie. “If you’re not gonna eat anything, at least drink this.”

Bucky doesn’t thank him, but he doesn’t decline either, sticking the straw in his mouth like an afterthought. Steve will take it. He’s nervous enough that he can’t sit still. He’s already been for a run, already picked up the phone to call Sam, or Nat, and put it down again. Nat probably already knows, and he will tell Sam eventually. Right now though, they’re waiting. “Remind me why we didn’t go over-”

“Didn’t want the first time he sees me to be in some fuckin’ hospital.” Bucky hands the glass back half-full, looking sick to his stomach. “It’s not fair.”

Steve can’t ask what he means by that. He doesn’t have time. The doorbell rings. Steve gets up to answer it. He’s not sure if Bucky is going to get up, but he does, tailing him to the door. “Ready?”

Bucky takes a deep breath. “Open it.”

Steve nearly crushes the glass. Nick doesn’t make any move to come into their apartment, because there’s a little kid with an arm around his leg, staring up at Steve.

Bucky, behind him, makes a noise like he’s ripping in two, and disappears, slips out the window and up the fire escape, heading for the roof. Steve turns to watch him go, completely at a loss. He turns back to Nick, sets the half-empty glass on the nearest table, leaving streaks of sweat behind before he crouches down, figuring he might as well be at eye level. “Hi,” he says to the child with Bucky’s face, wide blue eyes cautious and narrowed. “I’m Steve.”

The kid looks up at Nick and says something in Russian. Steve's heart jumps, an unpleasant thump deep beneath the bones.

Nick puts a hand on the kid's shoulder. “He wants to know why your friend is scared of him,” Fury says, gently guiding them all inside the apartment before shutting the door.

Steve looks at him, the calm lack of expectation in his eye and the way he hasn’t let go of the kid, even for a second, and breathes out. Nick isn’t here to satisfy his own curiosity. It's not a test. It’s a kindness.

Steve turns to the child, clearing his throat. "You look a lot like-" Steve starts, wondering whether this is going to be the first in a long, long string of half-truths. “Uh. You look a lot like he used to."

The kid blinks, looking past Steve at where Bucky exited, open window blowing cold air through the room. “Am I going to look like him?” His voice is lightly-accented, high and soft like a child’s should be, but it’s tired too. Tired and scared.

Nick takes a slow step back, and Steve sinks back down to a crouch, trying so, so hard not to stare. “Hey, you know what? I bet you will. Do you want something to drink?” Steve sticks out his hand and holds his breath.

The kid nods, and takes it.

He can feel Nick’s eyes on his back as he leaves the room, but the feeling of tiny, fragile bones in his palm is far, far more important.

This? This is a test, but Nick Fury isn’t the one who’s testing him.

Steve hands the kid a can, pops open the tab, and sits down with him at the table. “Hey. What’s your name?” He tries to make it gentle, just in case.

The little boy wearing Bucky’s face sips his can of coke with a little grimace of distaste, mouth pulling down as he pushes it away. “Alexei,” he says, after a little while, voice small. He doesn’t say anything else.

“Hi.” Bucky slinks into the kitchen, glasses misting at the temperature change. He smells like smoke and his hands are in his pockets, teeth worrying at his lower lip. Nick is nowhere to be seen, but Steve knows he’s listening.

Bucky makes eye contact, and Steve holds it, trying to convey for one long, helpless second how very little he knows what he’s doing here. There’s a little kid with Bucky’s face, his bony, tapered hands and his sulky lips, who doesn’t like coke, at their table, and Steve feels like he’s falling all over again seeing them in the same room.

Bucky says something in Russian. The kid- Alexei, who knows when or how anyone named him, or for what, but-

The kid freezes, turns, and launches himself towards Bucky, all tiny fists and tiny teeth and Bucky catches him, takes a deep, ragged breath, and holds on until he’s done, a little explosion contained in his arms.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky tells him. “I really didn’t know.”

The kid, face buried in Bucky’s shirt, doesn’t say anything at all.

-

"What did you say to him?"

They're on the fire escape again. Steve has a few theories as to why this has become the place they go to talk, but in the end it doesn’t really matter. It just matters that the words come out.

It’s still awful, remembering nights when all Bucky could do was try all the languages at his disposal and still come up empty. Now, he might take his time before he speaks, but he usually does.

“I told him what he was.” Bucky isn’t smoking right now, just sitting with his legs dangling off the edge, chin resting on his arms. He looks about as far from deadly as Steve has ever seen him, but nobody would ever mistake him for harmless. “I think he knew, anyway. He was angry.”

Steve isn’t sure if touch would be welcome right now, so he just folds himself up next to him, knees close but not brushing. Bucky is the one in the end who tentatively places himself against Steve’s side, leans in until they’re supporting each other’s weight.

“What do you want to do now?” Steve has to ask. He can’t leave it for later, even if he might want to. Fury left a few details behind that weren’t in the file, but he’s given them enough to make a decision.

Bucky’s shrug is more of a shudder. “I can’t just leave him to what’s left of SHIELD. We can’t.”

“Yeah.” Steve doesn’t have it in him to argue. He can still see Bucky’s face in duplicate, one lined and tired, the other half-formed but already guarded. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

-

“For the record, I really think you should be talking to both of us.” Steve likes Fury’s new office a lot better than the old one, but it still kind of stings that he’s gotten called here like Nick is the principal and Steve has to discuss his grades. “If anything-”

“I know.” Fury glares at him, then at the extremely comfortable looking brown armchair across from the one he’s sitting in. There’s no desk between them, which is kind of refreshing and suspicious at the same time. “I just asked you here to make sure this is what you want. It’s a big thing, taking on-”

“A potentially traumatised child who was created in a lab from my-”

“Frozen, brainwashed boyfriend.” Fury doesn’t blink. “Yes.”

Steve sits down. “Well. When you put it that way. But he’s not either of those things anymore.”

“You know we’ll have to keep tabs on the child.” Fury hands him a screen, maintaining the kind of eye contact Steve is used to by now but can’t quite shake what he associates it with. It’s so often the kind of change that comes with destruction. Oh god, he’s about to become a parent. Fury gives him a few seconds, clearly reading the signs. “Listen Steve, nobody’s going to make you do this.”

Steve takes a deep breath, scrolling through the information, the agreement he and Bucky will have to sign with Fury and Hill and, god, Coulson, alive and maybe not quite well, but- “He’s a kid. And Bucky-” he swallows, thinking of the sleepless nights, the pacing, the sudden appearance of sugary breakfast cereal and Bucky’s long, searching looks at people with children in the street, as though he’s trying to crack a code. “Look, it’s never going to be perfect. The least we can do is try to give this kid a life that’s less of a shitshow than the one he might have had.”

Fury laughs, a quick, surprised bark. “You kiss your momma with that mouth?”

“She’s dead,” Steve says. “Planning on kissing the man I live with though. Don’t think he minds all that much, we grew up around a lotta sailors.”

Fury chuckles slightly, handing him a sheaf of paperwork. “Ask him to sign all this first.”

Steve takes it, leafing through it quickly before he finally blurts out what’s been on the tip of his tongue since he walked in. “Listen, has anyone asked if this is what the- what Alexei wants? Last time he-”

Fury leans forward in his seat. “He’s been asking questions about you and Barnes for a solid week. We could hardly get him to say a word, before, and believe me, we were not going to force him.”

Steve swallows down the relief, mingled with something he thinks might be a kind of abstract sadness, that it would take something as shocking as that to produce curiosity in a child. “Okay. As long as it’s everyone’s decision.”

-

Bucky signs the papers shirtless at the kitchen counter, hair pinned up with one of Steve’s pencils and glasses sliding down his nose.

Steve has no idea what he’s been doing, but sometimes it’s best not to ask. There’s a clean, peculiar scent in the air, and all their cutlery is out all over every surface. It’s one of the days Steve used to wonder about, whether it would be better to talk it through or whether Bucky really needed space alone to come to terms with whatever he's wrestling with. It's still a toss-up.

Bucky still wakes up sometimes sure he’s somewhere else, but those nights are further and further and further apart.

Steve can recognise progress, even if it still sometimes manifests as Bucky painting an entire wall of their apartment with chalkboard paint and then keeping it filled with a variety of strange codes he changes at random. The cutlery thing is new, though.

“Say, what were you doing?” Steve asks, watching Bucky scan over what he’s putting his name to.

Bucky signs a page before he turns, glancing back over his right shoulder, pen in his left hand steady. “Movin’ all the sharp things,” he says. “Throwing away cigarettes.”

Steve fights down a surge of giddy warmth so strong it threatens to knock him off his feet. “We’re really doing this, huh?”

Bucky sticks the pen in his mouth, turning all the way around. The seam where arm meets shoulder is still a mess of scarring. He still has dark circles under his eyes that will never go away and threads of grey in his hair that shouldn’t be there, but he smiles too, sometimes. “We’re sure as hell gonna try,” he mumbles around the plastic in his teeth. It comes out muffled, but Steve doesn’t have any trouble catching the drift.

When he goes to add his signature, he signs under Bucky’s copperplate cyrillic.

-

Steve remembers the first week after Bucky was cleared to move in with the kind of startling clarity that only comes from hypervigilance. He remembers every blank stare, every shrieking nightmare, every single brush of skin that still felt raw and overexposed.

This isn’t like that.

This is, Steve thinks, a little like looking at his life from the outside, watching as his body moves. It still doesn’t quite feel real.

“It’s my turn, right?” Bucky rasps, dragging a shirt on from the floor.

The clock says it’s three in the morning. Steve’s body says it’s winter, and kids get cold. “We’ll both go,” he mutters, reaching for his pants.

Alexei is sitting curled up on the couch, watching the snow come down outside the window with his little arms wrapped around a pillow, hands clenched tight. He looks dully between them when they approach, but doesn’t make any other movement.

Steve stops just short of the couch, not wanting to scare him.. “Hey, d’you want to talk about it?”

Alexei shakes his head, refusing to disclose his nightmare.

Bucky’s right hand curls into a fist, and then relaxes. “Okay. Mind if we sit with you, though?”

Alexei shrugs, curling up smaller to make room. Steve remembers being this age, being small and sick and wanting someone to share warmth with. Alexei isn’t sick, not in the slightest, but it has to be strange, moving into an apartment in Brooklyn with the man whose stolen genes he was made from and... Steve himself. It has to be frightening.

He lowers himself slowly down, far enough away that he’s sure he’s not being threatening. “You know what I like to do when I can’t sleep?”

Bucky perches on the arm of the couch, listening. “I don’t think running is gonna work, Steve.”

Alexei looks between them, wide-eyed.

“Not that,” Steve says, hurriedly. “I was gonna say I like to listen to music, but I was thinking maybe we’d try TV. What do you say?”

Alexei blinks, clearly thinking about his answer. Steve’s heart breaks a little, that he so obviously thinks this is a trap of some kind, but Steve also knows that look inside out and back to front and knows it’s better to wait it out. Bucky, on the other side, is chewing his bottom lip, dark smudges under his eyes more pronounced in the dim lighting.

“Can we...” Alexei trails off, still looking between them, one and then the other, taking it in. “Can we watch cartoons?”

“Yeah kid,” Bucky says, quiet and rough. “We can watch cartoons.” Steve watches him slide slowly, slowly, slowly down until they’re both bracketing Alexei’s wiry frame. “Why don’t you pick?” He hands him the remote, right hand extended.

Alexei sticks a corner of his pillow in his mouth before he reaches out to snatch it, quick little fingers just barely brushing Bucky’s palm. Steve releases a breath he hadn’t even realised he’d been holding.

The TV clicks on, channels blur past in a stream of light and noise, and before long the sounds of a bird antagonising a coyote have settled into a strangely comforting pattern.

Steve should be watching the screen, probably, but his attention is caught by the way Alexei is slowly drooping, falling towards Bucky’s right shoulder like a tiny landslide until he’s all sprawled out against him, still gripping his pillow in his teeth. He’s fast asleep.

Bucky’s face, above him, is wide open, and completely terrified.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Steve says quietly, reaching gently over to grip his rigid shoulder. “You fall asleep where you don’t feel safe?”

Bucky, transfixed and mute, doesn’t reply.

Steve gently frees the remote and turns the TV off, heading to the kitchen for water. When he comes back, Bucky has his head tipped back, staring at the dark ceiling while Alexei drools onto his shirt, eyes suspiciously bright in the gloom.

Steve, abruptly, feels helplessly present, all the exhaustion of the last two months weighing his limbs down, anchoring him into the clench in his chest. “Here,” he says, handing Bucky a glass.

“Thanks,” Bucky mumbles, running his left hand over the rough stubble of his beard for a long moment before he takes it, drinks, and sets it on the side table, the arm’s low whirr a strangely welcome sound. It’s all part of him, now.

Steve crouches down in front of them, hoping he’s not about to say something he’ll regret. “How’re you doing?”

“Jesus, Steve,” Bucky says, tipping his chin down. “I don’t wanna fuck this up.”

Steve reaches out a hand, cautiously circling Bucky’s gunmetal wrist, feeling the plates shift under his fingers. “Bucky,” Steve whispers, “this is the dumbest, scariest thing we’ve ever done, and you shot me three times not that long ago.”

Bucky scrapes out a laugh, low in his throat. “That supposed to be comforting?”

“Hell no.” He shakes his head, still transfixed by the slow rise-and-fall of a half-formed chest, the comically fierce grip of baby teeth on fabric. He looks back up at Bucky, half-straightening to look him dead in the eyes. “Guess all I’m saying is that we’ve lived through wars and I’m still terrified of a six year old.” He smiles, lopsided. “You’re not the only one.”

Bucky frees his wrist from Steve’s grip, only to wrap his hand around the back of Steve’s neck, metal drawing goosebumps as he pulls him closer. “You’re an asshole,” Bucky informs him in a whisper, preventing Steve’s comeback with a kiss.

Alexei mumbles something incomprehensible, curling further into the warmth of Bucky’s side, and they break apart, both staring, both holding their breath. He doesn’t wake up, just fists his hand in Bucky’s shirt, hanging on.

Bucky looks helplessly at Steve, pinned against the arm of the couch by a small body.

Steve arranges himself on the floor next to them, leaning back against the coffee table. “Not going anywhere, are we?”

Bucky looks out the window, past the little drifts of snow collecting on the sill outside, and shakes his head.

  
-

“So how’s fatherhood treating you?”

Natasha’s hair is short now, a pixie cut that flatters her bone structure. Steve focuses on that because the word _fatherhood_ still sends a ripple of residual fear down his spine. “I like your hair.”

“You’re bad at this, Rogers,” Natasha says, grinning. “So are you going to offer me a beer or is the fridge kid-proofed as well?”

“Very funny.” Steve hands her a beer and the bottle opener, which she eschews in favour of just slamming the cap off on the kitchen counter with the heel of her palm. “You keep promising you’ll show me how to do that.”

“You’d punch a hole through your counters.” Natasha takes a sip of her beer and waits.

Steve can’t help the smile. He’s not sure why or how but Natasha asks every time, and she always manages to make it seem like she’s willing to hear bad with good. It’s nice, having her as a friend. Steve is glad for her, even if she and Bucky haven’t quite worked out what they are to each other in a way Steve will probably never understand.

“He wants us to call him Alex,” Steve tells her, leaning back against the fridge door. “He’s turning seven in a month, if the dates are right.”

“They’re right.” She says it with such authority that Steve wants to sit her down and ask all the questions he has backed up, all the tiny slivers of information that aren’t in Alex’s files. They have most of the story. Almost all of it. It just seems something so unspeakably evil, to make a child to be a weapon when the one they had already wasn’t perfect.

Steve smiles at her, wide as he can. “Oh good, you’re coming to the party, then. I’ll put you down for a plus one.”

“I knew you’d be smug. People with kids are always smug.” Natasha’s flat voice lacks any kind of heat. Her eyes are laughing. “Have you got pictures?”

7.

“Mister Buchanan, your son-”

“Our son did what.” Bucky has his arms crossed in front of his chest. It’s not a question.

  
Steve looks at the first grade teacher, standing next to the chalkboard with her eyes slowly widening, and debates stepping in, but Bucky is still calm. Alex is the one he’s worried about, hunched into himself at one of the comically tiny desks, scratching nervously at the surface, avoiding Steve’s eyes.

“Alex was held behind this evening for a confrontation with another child.” The teacher- Ms. Evans?- swallows hard as Bucky’s nostrils flare, but she stands her ground. Steve hopes it’s her. The names he remembers, but the faces tend to blur together into a kind of strange, educational mass until his head is reeling with the litany of _our child goes to school, our child is in the first grade and has a fifth grade reading level, they asked me to join the PTA, our child goes to school._

“We thought it was best to handle this personally, given that he’s moved around so much.” She’s just outright looking at Steve now, perhaps wrongly assuming he’s the reasonable one. The joke’s on her, a small, hysterical part of him shrieks. She didn’t see him sternly caution a man with a big dog in the park for allowing it to knock Alex over.

Bucky looks back and forth between them, narrows his eyes, and seemingly decides that Miss Evans isn’t worth his focus anymore. He turns on the heel of one well-worn boot and stomps over to Alex. She watches him go with her mouth slightly open.

Steve ignores her and watches as Bucky drops straight down into a crouch, looking seriously at Alex’s mutinous pout. “Hey kid. Wanna tell me what happened?” The kind of stillness he can maintain is bordering on the preternatural sometimes, but Steve really can’t deny that it’s effective.

Alex huffs angrily, then mutters something too low for even Steve to hear.

Bucky spits out a curse in Russian so foul that it startles a laugh out of Steve, earning him a scandalised look from the teacher. He wishes that was the first time he’d ever been on the receiving end of this kind of thing, but he could tell her a thing or two about little kids who didn’t know enough not to punch out of their weight class. The history books he’s read are pretty selective.

“Listen, if you’re gonna do that, don’t get caught,” Bucky says seriously, fingers tapping the desk. “How many of these little bastards are in on it?”

Alex holds up three fingers, thick eyebrows scrunched up. “I told them to fuckin’ quit it,” he enunciates, “but Jason said that the more gum you stick in somebody’s hair the more points you get so I hit him.” For a second he sounds so much like Bucky used to that Steve is momentarily short of breath, a muscle-memory remnant of a past only he remembers, but the moment passes. This is something Steve would have done. He never did have that little voice telling him to leave well enough alone. Or, if he did, he was a pro at ignoring it.

Miss Evans takes a step forward. “Young man, that kind of language-”

“We’ll take care of it,” Steve tells her, doing his absolute best not to burst out laughing. Nick Fury, somewhere, is winning a bet, he’s sure.

Bucky sits back on his heels, still looking at Alex. “Look, if you wanna get someone to stop doing something, your best bet is information. Beating up on someone in public? ‘S not the smartest option.”

Miss Evans looks eight seconds away from a heart attack, so Steve steps in, still doing his level best to look serious for fear that this might somehow end up in a magazine somewhere, _Captain America’s Child Is Schoolyard Vigilante._

Steve clears his throat. “Maybe we should apologise to Miss Evans and take this home, what do you say?”

Alex nods, gets up with all the dignity someone so far from grown can muster, and sticks his hand directly into Steve’s, hanging on far tighter than the stoniness of his face would suggest. “You fight all the time,” he says quietly. “I’ve seen you on YouTube.”

“That’s my job,” Steve tells him, wondering how best to phrase it. “I try to only fight bad people, if I can.”

Alex looks at Bucky, bracketing him on the other side, glaring at the teacher as they leave the room. Steve makes a note to send her flowers, but it’s a distinctly secondary concern. “Dad says they were aliens,” Alex says suspiciously. “Were they really aliens, Steve?”

“Sometimes they’re aliens,” Steve manages, squeezing his hand.

Bucky, on his other side, looks poleaxed.

_Dad. He called him Dad._

Alex grips back, little chin thrust forward. “Well, Jason’s not an alien,” Alex concedes, “but he’s a jerk.”

Bucky looks down at him, something strange in the set of his mouth. It takes Steve a second or two to see that he’s trying desperately to hold in a smile. “You can’t punch jerks until you’re older, okay? I’ll teach you some pressure points.”

Steve should probably contradict him, but he’s never been above fighting dirty. “Just make sure it’s for the right reasons,” he confirms.

“Okay,” Alex agrees, sticking his left hand up. “Can we take the subway home?”

Bucky grates out a laugh, the first one Steve has heard in public, and takes it. “Yeah,” he says slowly. “Stick close.”

-

“I have a kid,” Steve tells Sam, next time he comes over to grill on the roof.

Sam shoots him an unimpressed look and gestures for the turning fork. “Hate to break it to you, but that hasn’t been news for like, a year.” Sam turns the steak over with a professional eye, then looks back at Steve, gesturing with his beer. “What’s brought on this sudden surge of realisation? Getting up in the middle of the night? Doing laundry covered in weird stains? Crayons stuck where no crayons should go?”

Steve laughs, thinking how glad he is they got to skip that stage, even if for fairly terrible reasons. “He got in a fight at school. Saw some other kids playing a mean game with gum or something and took it upon himself to do something about it.”

Sam levels a steady, knowing look at him, eyebrows raised. “Can’t imagine where he gets that from.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, grinning. “Also, he called Bucky ‘Dad.’” Steve lets it settle as he takes a sip of his beer, enjoying the coolness of it, even if it doesn’t do anything else. He wonders sometimes whether Alex will be like him and Bucky, whether he’ll never be able to get drunk, whether he’ll be able to go without sleep and food and shelter. More, though, he hopes he’ll never have to.

Sam closes the lid of the grill. Steve hasn’t got any interest in interrupting the process. Ever since the first time Steve tried, Sam has been in charge of food when he comes over. “Uh huh,” he says, slowly. “How’d he take that?”

“I thought he was going to swallow his tongue,” Steve confesses. “That’s a good sign though, right? That we’re not... I dunno, warping him?”

“Steve.” Sam pokes the turning fork in his direction, gesturing with the beer in his other hand. “Your kid asked me why my wings weren’t attached to me like Bucky's arm.” He shakes his head. “Maybe he’s gonna grow up a little odd, but man, he’s got a lot to deal with, and so do you. You thought about how you’re going to explain why Bucky is still alive? Why you put on tights in the middle of the night sometimes and don’t get to come home for a week?"

Steve mulls it over for a second, thinking about how they’re going to tackle all that when it comes up, because it will. “Well,” he says, “he already knows he’s Bucky’s clone.”

“He’s a good kid,” Sam says, “for one getting raised by a pack of people with more issues than a comic book. Has he met Stark yet?”

“Tony’s allergic to children,” Steve says. “He gave us a set of tools and a note that said ‘teach him to fix that Soviet fossil tech so I don’t have to.’”

“Cute.” Sam opens the grill again. “Perfect, you want to gather the troops?”

Steve salutes him and goes to find the rest of their little gathering.

“Hey, Rogers,” Nat says as he climbs in the window. Alex is hanging upside-down from the top of the door to Steve and Bucky’s bedroom, contorted to have one little elbow wrapped around Nat’s neck. “You’ve got a talented one here.”

Alex, for his part, grins widely, showing the gaps in his teeth.

Bucky is watching them with a critical eye. “A little higher. You want to cut off airflow as soon as possible.”

Alex duly tightens his grip, just as Natasha reaches up and drags him down, both of them landing in a heap on the floor, Alex gasping as she tickles him. “Not fair!” he shrieks, delighted.

“Dinner’s ready,” Steve says, trying and failing to hold in a smile. Maybe he’s gonna grow up a little odd. So what. They’re all odd. At least he’s loved.

Alex’s eyes widen. He jumps up and stares Natasha dead in the eyes. “Race you,” he declares, before haring off up the fire escape. Nat watches him go with just the very smallest hint of a smile before she gives chase.

Bucky sidles up to him, coming in at his usual oblique angle, hair coming out of its tie and shirt wrinkled. He’s not really looking at Steve, but he’s not really looking at anything else, either. “Hey,” he says, “do you think that means he doesn’t like our cooking?”

Steve slings an arm around his shoulders. “Pal, neither one of us can cook for shit.”

Bucky snorts. “Speak for yourself. I make a mean bowl of cereal.”

Steve turns, hiding his grin in Bucky’s hair. “Should we join ‘em?”

“Give it a minute,” Bucky says. “Nat’s gotta write a report.”

“Right.” Steve sighs. “Our kid’s gonna be really strange, isn’t he?”

Bucky shrugs, slipping his left hand around Steve’s waist, cold fingers skirting under the hem of his shirt, mechanical whirr of joints settling in its welcome familiarity. “Least he’s gonna have choices,” Bucky says, tightening his grip.

8.

The one thing Steve has learned, through nothing more than painful, helpless experience, it’s that nightmares get better, but they never really go away.

Bucky wakes up gasping instead of screaming this time, wakes up before he’s tangled in the sheets, before he’s curled into a ball on the floor, eyes wide and blank, miles and years away. It's better. He just breathes himself awake, dragging in air like a drowning man.

Steve doesn’t touch him, just sits up in bed, reaching groggily for the glass of water by the bed. “You’re alright, Buck,” he says quietly, holding it out. “You’re okay.”

“What’s the year?” Bucky asks, staring straight ahead, shoulders hunched, hands limp in his lap.

“Twenty-seventeen,” Steve tells him. “You’re in Brooklyn.”

Bucky’s left hand clinks on the glass as he takes it. “You say that every time.”

“No I don’t.” Steve watches him drink. “Last year it was twenty-sixteen.”

Bucky rasps something. It’s not a laugh, not even close. He sounds like he’s forcing sound out and coming up with this noise, like screams trapped in a closed throat. “Smartass.”

Steve breathes out, leaning forward as he slowly lays a hand on Bucky’s back, feeling the tremors fade. He rubs a slow circle, waiting for Bucky to relax. “Learned from the best,” he says, letting his hand drift up and down Bucky’s spine, soft and aimless.

“Dad? Steve?”

Bucky stiffens.

Alex pokes his head through the door, blinking sleepy eyes at them in the faint light from the street below.

Steve takes a deep breath for both of them before he speaks. “What’s up?” It comes out soft, measured.

Alex looks at his feet. “I had a bad dream,” he mumbles, shuffling just inside the doorway. “An’ you said, you said-”

“I had a bad dream too,” Bucky interrupts, finally making eye contact with Steve as he hands the glass back, shifting over ever so slightly. “Come on.”

Alex hesitates for a second but then he’s just a little blur, launching himself across the distance from door to bed in a flurry of limbs. Bucky catches him as he burrows head first into the covers, curling into the space between them. “Did your dream have monsters?” he asks, half-muffled by the sheets.

“Yeah,” Bucky says, carding a hand through Alex’s hair, “it did.”

Steve keeps his hand on Bucky’s back, smoothing down the scarred line of his vertebrae, marvelling at the fact that he’s here at all, when everything logical and sane should have made it an impossibility.

Bucky curls an arm around Alex, drawing him closer as he lies back down, arranging himself so they’re closed parentheses, Alex’s back against his chest, Steve completing the shape. Alex looks groggily at him, already falling back to sleep. “You kill mo’strs,” he mutters, wriggling a little. “Right?”

“Right,” Steve tells him, feeling Bucky’s eyes on him as much as he has a hand on him in turn, arm stretching across the space they’ve made, bridging the gap.

In the morning, Alex has one foot in Steve’s kidney and the ends of some of Bucky’s hair in his mouth, breathing slow and deep despite it.

Steve slowly disentangles himself and takes a picture. In it, Bucky is glaring hard enough to make him think twice, but Steve saves it anyway.


	2. Chapter 2

9.

“I assure you, Captain, it is no trouble.” Thor is beaming widely into the apartment, force of his smile enough to make Alex press back into Steve’s legs. He knows the feeling. Thor is a lot to deal with at first. “Greetings, young man,” Thor continues, crouching down, “we shall watch many movies, you and I. Jane has given me a most excellent list.”

“We really appreciate it.” Steve feels he can speak for Bucky in this case, even if he’s not immediately in sight. Bucky hasn't quite parsed Thor yet. Pepper had suggested him as a sitter when Steve had mentioned to her that they’d need one though, which is definitely enough of an endorsement. Clint, their closest neighbor and usual call, is in LA. Steve doesn’t even want to know.

It’s been a while since they went anywhere, but tonight it's just supposed to be uptown, some kind of function thing that Steve is expected at and Bucky refused to take an out on, even though he hates the kind of crowds they’re going to have to endure.

In any case, Thor has shown up promptly at seven, wearing an extremely incongruous pair of jeans and some very brightly colored sneakers, grinning fit to burst. Steve still hasn’t managed to figure out his stupid tie and Bucky will show up at the door the second they have to leave and not an instant before, wearing whatever the hell he wants. Steve is just stupidly, selfishly glad he’s going to be there to stare people away from conversations.

Thor extends one giant hand towards Alex, suddenly serious. “On Asgard, it is a privilege to be given guard of another’s child.”

“Steve,” says Alex, looking up, wide-eyed, “is he real?”

Thor guffaws. “Excellent,” he says, standing up, taking up all the space in the hall. “Have you any games played on boards? I have taken a liking to them. I suspect your child will be a worthy opponent.”

Steve blinks. “We have, uh, Yahtzee? I think?”

Luckily, that’s when Bucky shows up, which means it’s time to go. He’s wearing the same thing he wore yesterday, but as he approaches Steve he reaches out, deftly fixing the mess he’s made of the tie knot.

“Dad.” Alex looks between them and Thor, still undecided, before he starts to look a little sly, smiling like he knows he’s about to get away with something. “Can we order pizza?”

Steve laughs, relieved. Bucky looks at Thor, still blocking the door like a linebacker. Thor’s grin widens. “Sure,” Bucky says slowly, pushing his hair out of his face. He has gloves on. Steve wants to kiss him so badly it hurts for coming out at all, much less taking it upon himself to be a plus one to something Steve only views as an obligation.

Alex gives Thor a cautious smile and disentangles himself from Steve’s side, making a beeline for the phone.

“Call if you need us to come back,” Steve tells Thor, very seriously, “for any reason.”

“He is in safe hands,” Thor insists, clapping him on the shoulder for punctuation, following Alex into the living room.

“You’re sure you want to do this?” Steve asks Bucky, trying to force himself out the door.

“I’m not made’a glass,” Bucky says sharply. “It’s mostly metal.”

Steve gives in to the urge he’s been fighting off and kisses him, just a quick brush of lips. “Once I’ve talked to everyone Pepper tells me to talk to-”

“We’re gonna be late,” Bucky says, almost amused.

-

The party is exactly the kind of show Steve was expecting. People ask him questions he does his best not to answer. He poses for photographs. People glance sideways at Bucky as though they can’t quite place him, and Steve thinks how much easier his job used to be when he could legitimately claim he went on covert missions he wasn’t at liberty to speak about, but he’s an Avenger now, and that’s not what he signed up for in the wake of SHIELD’s collapse and slow restructuring.

He also can’t help but feel as though what he went through- Hydra, project insight- might all have been just a drop in the ocean, if SHIELD is still doing their level best to gain back lost ground.

He counts the hours down, watching Bucky gravitate to Natasha, circling her around the room in some kind of oblique social game, reappearing at Steve’s side every so often with a drink, and aside, a timely glare at whoever he’s talking to.

Steve smiles blandly at the person talking at him, eats a canape, and thinks about Alex.

Two hours later, Bucky appears at his elbow, staring out at the room. “Are you off the hook yet?”

Steve looks around. There’s nobody making a beeline for him. “Looks like now’s our chance.”

When they get home, Thor is lying on the couch watching Masterchef with Alex asleep on his chest, his lanky, nine-year-old body completely dwarfed by Thor’s bulk. “Ah!” Thor stage whispers, “safe return.”

Life, Steve reflects, is very, very strange sometimes.

10.

Steve gets called away sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes during the day, sometimes when he’s supposed to go and get Alex from school. It’s his job, and he can’t trade it in, even if he wanted to, but it does mean that sometimes he comes home and there’s been a little shift, something he can feel he’s missed.

Bucky is on the fire escape, and Alex is nowhere to be seen.

“Hey,” Steve ventures, climbing out to join him.

Bucky is smoking, a habit rare enough now that it’s become unusual, a sign that he’s wrestling with something. Steve doesn’t press, because it never ends well, but he knows when something is bothering him, can’t stop the urge he feels to try to fix it, whatever it is, even if he knows he’ll never be able to.

“Kids’re doin’ the war at school.” Bucky has settled on Lucky Strikes as his brand of choice. Steve wonders if that’s deliberate, a taste-memory anchor. “Alex is at Clint’s. Wanted to pet the dog.”

Steve reaches over and takes the cigarette out of his fingers. If ever there was a time for it, it’s now, when he’s tired and bruised and has scorch marks in places he’s never felt before. By morning they’ll be gone, but for now, he aches, a bone deep exhaustion settling into his body that's almost a comfort for its familiar presence. The smoke hits the back of his throat. He coughs, and hands it back. “You okay?”

“Those’ll kill ya,” Bucky tells him, smoking the rest of it in silence. Finally, once he’s stubbed it out, he crosses and uncrosses his legs, staring out at the view. “I don’t remember it. He asked me why our faces were in the book and I had to tell him. But I don’t- I don’t remember the war. I just remember-” He cuts himself off, unfinished.

“I do,” Steve says quietly. “When I woke up here it was like I was still fighting it, y’know? Felt like it’d only been a week.” He leans back against the brick of their building, watching the view blur into watercolor before he realises he’s not really looking at anything. “I miss Peggy. She’d have told us to quit bein’ so dramatic.”

“She sure had your number,” Bucky says, slowly, picking around his consonants. “All I’ve got is this- this _feeling_ like if I poke the bruise hard enough that’ll be enough to bring it all back. I- I remember just wantin’ to go home, but you- you would have stayed.”

“Yeah.” Steve is forced to agree, sick to his stomach. He’d known, back then, that one of them was carrying a heavier weight. He’d known and he’d asked him to stay anyway.

“These fuckin’ kids had better learn from our screw-ups,” Bucky says, before he clamps his left hand on the railing and vaults over it, dropping down into the darkness.

Steve watches him go, breath sitting stale in his lungs. He stays out there for a little while, absently petting one of the cats Bucky pretends he doesn’t feed, then goes inside to call Clint.

-

“You look like shit,” Clint says, Alex thrown over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. “Whaddaya think, kid?” He turns so Alex can see Steve, looking back over his shoulder at the limp body in his grip. “Does Cap look like shit?”

Clint’s one-eyed dog, at his feet, looks distinctly unimpressed. Steve sympathises.

“I can’t talk,” Alex says, limp arms swaying, “I’m enacting a nonviolent protest.”

Clint rolls his eyes and turns back to Steve, Alex’s feet dragging at his sweatpants. “Your kid’s really weird,” Clint informs him. “Catch.”

Clint levers Alex over his arm, depositing him in Steve’s waiting grip. “Aren’t you a little old to be carried?” Steve tries and fails not to smile.

Alex gives him a dignified little huff. “Clint said I wasn’t old enough to play with his boomerang arrows, so no.”

“Touche,” Steve says, not wanting to argue tonight, even if Clint is absolutely right that no ten year old should be playing with sharp things that rebound. “Want to play cards instead?”

“Lame. Can I play videogames?” Alex looks as though he knows that’s a fifty-fifty chance, but Steve is truthfully a little relieved. “Sure. Bedtime’s at ten, okay?”

Alex’s grin breaks across his face, gleeful and sly. “Awesome,” he breathes. “You can put me down now.”

Steve drops him. He lands in a heap, squawking. “Hey!”

Steve shrugs. “What would Nat say?”

“Constant vigilance,” Alex mutters, bouncing back to his feet and heading off towards the living room.

Steve sighs, turning back to Clint. “Thanks for watching him. And bringing him back.” Clint rubs the back of his neck, ratty sweater falling back to the elbow as he looks at the floor. Steve can never help but notice the constant shifting pattern of bruises Clint always seems to sport and wonder what he gets up to in his downtime that he doesn’t tell them about. Steve changes the subject, aware that thanks make Clint uncomfortable. “Beer before you go?”

“Now you’re singing the song of my people.” Clint jerks his chin at the dog, and they both trail Steve into the kitchen, past Alex on the couch with one of Bucky’s stray cats in his lap, gleefully smashing buttons on a controller, completely absorbed by the screen.

Steve offers Clint a bottle, grabbing water for himself. He doesn't feel like the reminder that he’s not quite completely human anymore that alcohol always gives him. “At the risk of sounding-”

“Look, if this is a marriage thing, I can tell you categorically that you’re barking up the wrong tree.” Clint twists the cap off, even though it’s not a twist top. “I might even go so far as to say you’re in the wrong forest.” The dog huffs, offended, and leaves the room. “Aw, c’mon, I thought that was good!” Lucky continues on his canine way, tail in the air. Clint turns back to Steve, suddenly giving him the weight of his focus. “Did he take off?”

Steve leans back against the counter, always a little surprised by how heavy Clint’s attention can be when he’s concentrating. It doesn’t seem worth it to remind him that he and Bucky have never even talked about marriage, or what it would mean. “Yeah.”

“Thought he might.” Clint takes a long swig, still looking at Steve. “Sometimes you’re just not ready to tell your war stories, y’know?”

“We’ll have to tell him eventually,” Steve says, feeling every year of his age suddenly, even though he’s spent the vast majority of his long, long life frozen in ice, somewhere just at the very edge of existence. “I guess I was just hoping it’d come up later, when we’d had more time.”

“Well, if wishes were horses.” Clint drinks his beer, leaving the sentence unfinished.

“If wishes were horses?”

Clint shrugs. “I dunno, nobody ever says the rest of it, so I don’t know how it ends. Look, my point is, he’s young, yeah, but he’s not a dumbass. Plus you’re probably not gonna fuck him up any more than he already is. He’s spent the last four years with you, you think he doesn’t know how to use the internet? You’re Captain America. I’m pretty sure he knows.”

Steve laughs, trying not to choke on his water. “Yeah, and the guy he calls Dad died in nineteen forty-five and then spent seventy years-”

“You adopted that kid,” Clint jerks his head at the living room, where the faint sound of a satisfied ‘ha!’ is filtering through the door, “when he was six, right? He picked you too. Gotta give him at least a little credit. He probably knows you both better than you think.” Clint stares at him for a long second before he drops his eyes. “Hell. I don’t know why I said that. You got another one of these?” He waves the bottle in Steve’s general direction, not meeting his eyes.

“Sure,” Steve says slowly, handing him a new beer.

It’s easy to forget sometimes that they’ve all got war stories, albeit different kinds. He doesn’t know Clint the way Nat does, or understand him the way Bucky seems to, but he knows an orphan when he sees one. Clint takes the beer, twists the cap off, and stares at it.

“Hey,” Steve ventures, “want to stay for dinner?”

Clint rallies, making his best effort at a grin. “The stories I’ve heard about your cooking, man.”

“I was gonna order Chinese,” Steve informs him. “They deliver.”

Clint looks back over his shoulder. Steve can already see him angling for the door, so when Clint says, “Thanks, but I ate earlier. Your pocket-size is probably hungry again though,” it’s not a surprise.

“Another time, then,” Steve says.

Clint toasts him with the beer, condensation dripping over his scarred fingers, and turns to go.

“Clint,” Steve ventures, before he disappears, still holding his open drink. “Thanks.”

“Really, please never mention it,” Clint asks, “really don’t.”

Steve watches him leave the kitchen, taking a second alone before he goes back out to the living room. Clint has collected his dog from the couch and is saying goodbye to Alex, tapping him on the head with two fingers in passing as Alex swats at his hand.

Steve waits until he’s gone to sit down in the warm spot left by Lucky, sprawling out to watch Alex play a game in which his character shoots blue and orange holes in reality.

It’s easy. An hour passes in near-silence, punctuated only by Alex’s small explosions of satisfaction or frustration. It’s normal. It’s good.

Eventually, Alex puts the controller down, rucking his pants up as he pulls a knee up under him and turns to face Steve. “Is Dad okay?” he asks, biting his lower lip.

He looks so much like Bucky that Steve almost chokes. He isn’t Bucky, though. He’s got more sense than either of them ever did, even if he has the same habit of sticking everything in his mouth if he’s not concentrating. Even if he has the same face. “Kind of,” Steve tells him, deciding to just let it out. “He’s having a bad day.”

“The history teacher says he’s dead,” Alex says, a hint of anger creeping into his voice. “I wish I could tell him he isn’t, but-”

“Alex, we talked about this.” Steve mirrors his position, the better to look him in the eye. “It’s fine if people know about me. I didn’t really have a choice, but Bucky does, and he doesn’t want to talk about it. That’s why he has a different name, now. Do you tell people how come you look so much like him?”

Alex thinks for a minute, biting the very edge of his thumbnail. His fingers have inkstains and his nails are filthy. Steve does his level best not to drag him into a hug right then and there. “No.” Alex finally admits. “Is it ‘cause he doesn’t like to remember stuff sometimes that he doesn’t want to tell me about the war?”

“Yeah.” Steve gives in to the urge, opening his arms. Alex dives in, a growing cannonball of energy and life. Steve breathes in the scent of his hair, dusty and strange from Clint’s apartment and the streets outside, still carrying a faint hint of shampoo. “A lot of the stuff that happened after is really terrible, too. Maybe he’ll tell you someday, but that kind of thing, it-” he pauses, wondering how Sam would frame it, if he was here. He pulls back a little, just enough to get a look at Alex’s face. “You know how when most people get cut, it leaves a scar?”

“Like Dad’s shoulder?”

“Yeah, like that,” Steve agrees. “That can happen to people inside, too.”

“Whenever I get a cut, it’s gone in the morning.” Alex’s eyebrows furrow. “You had more bruises when we came home.”

Steve reaches up, poking gingerly at his eye. It does feel better, but in a way he wishes it didn’t. “Yeah. Bucky heals fast too, but this was a really deep cut. It takes longer. It might not ever heal all the way.”

Alex rests his cheek on Steve’s chest, rigid like he’s listening for something only he can hear. “Nat says people’s heartbeats change when they’re lying,” he says. “But I know you’re not. Do you wish you could make him better?”

Steve has to remind himself to breathe. It’s such a question to answer. _Do you wish you could make him better._ “You can’t always fix people, Alex,” Steve says, heart in his throat, “sometimes you just have to accept that they’re doing their best, and that it’s not up to you. All you can do is be there to help.”

Alex fists a hand in Steve’s shirt, little knuckles going white. He doesn’t say anything for long enough that Steve starts to get worried, but finally he shifts, wriggling a little so he can look back up. “He’s really weird sometimes.”

“Yeah,” Steve agrees. “You think he’ll ever admit he feeds the cats?”

“He calls that one Not Our Cat like that’s a name,” Alex mumbles, pointing out a tortoiseshell tom sneaking into the kitchen.

Steve bursts out laughing. "I dunno. I think it suits him."

Alex huffs. "It’s not a name.” He pauses, stiffening again. “Hey Steve?”

“Yes?” Steve waits, braced for something he really won’t be able to answer.

Instead, Alex’s voice goes small, quiet. So much more like the child he very much still is. “Is he coming back?”

Steve has to remind himself not to grip too tight when he hugs him again. “Yes,” he tells him, “I promise you he’ll be back.”

Alex lets out a shuddering little breath, tension melting out of his body. “Okay.” He pauses for a second, hand still gripping Steve’s shirt slowly relaxing. “Can we order Chinese?"

"Sure." Steve runs a hand through Alex's hair, letting go when he pulls away.

-

Bucky comes home sometime in the small hours.

Steve is watching the news with the volume turned all the way down, absently reading the scrolling headlines while he sketches. Nothing coming off the end of his pencil really has a shape, all strange blocks with surrealist shadows. He’s not really paying attention.

“Hey,” Bucky says, ducking in the window. His hair is tied back tight and there’s still tape on his hands, the left wrapped all the way down to the tips of his fingers.

He smells like the sea, salty and faintly metallic when Steve makes space for him on the couch, dragging him in close. “You okay?” Steve asks, wanting, just for a second, to cling.

Bucky doesn’t say anything for a long, long time, right hand tapping a staccato pattern into Steve’s thigh instead, not morse, not anything he can parse. “‘S hard to learn from mistakes if you’re still makin’ ‘em,” he mutters at last, disentangling himself and heading for the shower.

Steve has no idea what he means. He wishes that was unusual.

He tips his head back, letting it thunk down on the back of the couch. His black eye is gone, vanished into the wash of healing, but his jaw is still clicking where he cracked it back into place. He works it for a while, feeling the prickle of new stubble under his fingers.

For a second, he presses into the pain, welcoming the starburst nerve response. He pushes just a little harder and it thunks, somewhere deep inside the joint. The pain flares and dies. Steve lets his hand fall and stares at the ceiling, listening to the shower run and run and run.

He gets up, following the noise.

He knocks on the bathroom door, loud enough that the small movements he can hear go still for a second before Bucky answers. “You comin’ in or what?”

Steve lets out a breath, absurdly relieved. He’s greeted by a cloud of steam as he enters, shower door already open. Bucky’s clothes are strewn around, left where he’s dropped them. The boxing tape is piled in the sink, rust-streaked where Bucky’s knuckles split anyway.

Steve strips out of his clothes, pushing them into the hamper for later before he steps into the spray.

Back when Bucky first moved in, Steve hadn’t really spared a thought for how it might affect him, things like the layout of the apartment, the way the plumbing clanked in the winter.

He’d learned. They’d renovated.

Bucky is standing with his back to the water, rinsing shampoo out of his hair. Even in the mist, he looks tired. “Come on,” he says, wiping water out of his eyes. “It’s gettin’ cold.”

Steve takes his turn. It’s still scorching despite Bucky’s claim, the kind of hot he can’t seem to get enough of. It feels good to just stand there for a second, letting the water wash off the day.

Bucky watches him for a while, condensation beading on his eyelashes, running in rivers down the grooves of his arm as he reaches up. “You ever gonna stop throwing yourself into it like this?” he asks, left hand, warm from the water, pressing not-quite-gently into the spot where Steve’s clavicle is settling back into place.

Steve takes a heavy breath, looking at the whole patched-together expanse of him; the scars on his chest, hips, one old, old burn that’s never gone away staining the inner edge of his right ankle. The metal arm.

It’s astonishing. It’s always astonishing, what Bucky has lived through.

“It’s my job,” Steve says at last, “if I don’t-”

“End of the world, I know.” Bucky presses harder, then steps in, settling in flush to Steve’s body. The contrast between them never seems to go away, Steve thinks, hooking his chin over Bucky’s shoulder. He used to be small enough to fit like a puzzle piece against Bucky’s side. Now, he’s the taller one, and his skin is smoother than it has any right to be, given the life he’s led.

Bucky turns, ever so slightly, and sinks his teeth into Steve’s neck, fingers skating over the crest of his hip, teasing along the definition of the muscle.

Steve breathes deep as Bucky’s hand closes around him, feeling like he’s back in his old body for just a second, laughing under the covers of the bed they’d shared one summer, when it was so hot all they’d needed was a sheet and an open window, but then Bucky is dragging him down for a kiss, both of them breathless from the steam. Steve’s palm skates over the ridge of scar, meeting warmed metal and hard skin together. He remembers. Neither of them are who they used to be.

It’s been seventy-five years. It’s been less than ten. Either way, it feels like a lifetime. Steve could tell him he’s missed him, but Bucky already knows.

11.

  
The doorbell rings.

Steve pauses with a page of his book half-turned. Bucky sticks his head in from the kitchen where he’s set up a kind of ad-hoc office, running through all the below-board codebreaking Natasha sends him with one eyebrow raised impressively. “Are we expecting company?”

“No,” Steve says slowly, getting up and crossing to the buzzer. It’s so unused as to almost need a layer of illustrative dust. “Hello,” he says evenly, hoping it’s anything other than what he thinks it is.

“Evening, Captain,” Says Nick Fury, one eye peering into the security camera. “Thought I’d stop by, see how things are going.”

“Uh,” Steve manages, looking back over his shoulder at Bucky, mouthing _Fury?_ across the room before pressing the button. “Come on in, I guess.”

Nick grins at the camera before it goes blank.

Steve looks at Bucky. Bucky shrugs. “Don’t look at me,” he mutters, “he’s _your_ CO.”

-

“Hope you don’t mind,” Nick says, voice as unreadable as it ever is. “I was in the neighborhood.”

Steve can’t quite shake the feeling that they’re being checked up on, in some nebulous way, but after everything they went through, Nick isn’t unwelcome. That’s the kind of thing that makes you accept a person’s flaws. “Thanks for not breaking in this time,” Steve says, stepping aside.

“Afternoon, Sergeant,” Fury says to Bucky, casting a look around the apartment.

“Still retired,” Bucky says, seemingly unconcerned as he heads back to the kitchen, sweeping all his papers into a pile and filing them as Steve and Nick follow.

“So I see.” Fury sits down, perching incongruously on one of their kitchen stools. “Relax, gentlemen,” he says, voice stern. “This is a social call. Where’s Alexei?”

“At school,” Bucky says shortly, leaning against the wall with his eyes narrowed. “Where an eleven year old should be.”

“It’s not a test, Mr. Barnes,” Says Nick, calm and even. “I’m really just stopping by.”

Steve clears his throat. “We’re going to get Alex in an hour. You could come, if you- if you wanted?”

Bucky glances at him before he nods his agreement. “Help yourself to whatever,” he says, “In the meantime.” He jerks his chin at Steve, heading for the living room. Steve follows without comment, waving awkwardly at Fury, hoping it encompasses the general direction of the fridge.

Bucky looks back at the kitchen. “What does he want?”

“I have no idea,” Steve whispers, “but- he did ask us if we wanted to take this on. He’s kept everyone off our backs about it, I think we should-”

“You’re not the only ones with enhanced hearing,” Fury says calmly from the kitchen. “Stand down. I’d like to stay for dinner, if you don’t mind. I’m partial to Indian.”

“Alex hates Indian,” Bucky says unrepentantly.

“We’ll compromise,” Nick calls back, clearly unruffled.

-

The usual crowd of moms at the pick-up gate start smiling as soon as they see Bucky, then noticeably pale when they spot Steve and Nick; Fury, for his part, seems deeply unperturbed to be the object of scrutiny, and after a second, Mrs. Mitchell decides to breach the distance.

Steve wishes he could say he’s surprised it’s her, but he can’t. He first met her on the school run when she had marched right up to them, all five-foot-nothing of her, and poked Bucky right in the chest, much to his evident surprise.

Steve had barely refrained from snapping her like a twig out of reflex, but Bucky had just put a hand out, a little signal for ‘stand back.’ Steve had carefully, if not gracefully, hung back as she had harangued him for at least a full minute about “where exactly am I supposed to send that foolproof recipe I promised you if your email address is always ‘pending’ on the contact list! I know boys would rather live on takeout, but believe me, nobody can screw this one up!”

Steve remembers being a little boggled at how Bucky had carefully deflected her, mustering a smile from somewhere and introducing Steve like he did it all the time.

Now, she strides over, smiling widely. “Hello!” she exclaims at Bucky, standing on tiptoes to peck him on the cheek. “Nice to see you, Steve,” she says, a bit more measured. “And?” She sticks a hand out to Nick, evidently taking the group initiative, if the watching cluster of other parents is anything to go by.

“Nicholas,” Fury says, smiling brightly. “I’m Alex’s... uncle, I suppose you might say.”

“It’s so nice to see unusual families,” Mrs. Mitchell declares, turning back to Bucky now that her reconnaissance is completed. “How have you been, James? You always seem like you work too hard. Believe me, I used to freelance, I know.”

Steve looks at Fury. Fury looks back, face stony in a way Steve suspects is actually a consequence of holding in laughter by long practice. Steve is not in the betting pool of people who think Fury’s face is only allowed to make a total of six expressions. He’s seen at least eight.

“How’s Sarah?” Bucky asks, backing up, just a little, until his shoulder is brushing Steve’s.

Mrs. Mitchell smiles brightly, evidently rolling with the segue. “She’s on the softball team now, You would not believe the stains.”

“You might be surprised,” Bucky mutters, glancing at the school door like he’s praying for the bell.

“Well, you do have a boy,” Mrs. Mitchell agrees easily. “How’s work, Steve?”

It’s a fairly pointed question. To their credit, most of the other parents Steve has met don’t really try to pretend they don’t know who he is, but they do have the ingrained disdain of all New Yorkers for celebrity, so by and large they just include him in invitations to PTA-organised events that he usually sends a check to. It seems easier.

“Business as usual,” Steve says, acutely aware of Fury, now openly chuckling at him.

Thankfully, the bell rings, heralding a flood of children out the doors, and Mrs. Mitchell goes off to collect her brood. Alex makes a beeline for them, stopping just short of arm’s reach when he sees Fury. “Hello,” he says cautiously, inching closer to Bucky, scuttling sideways until Bucky’s side is flush with his. “Is everything-”

“It’s good to see you, Alex.” Fury is smiling, an expression that almost manages to be reassuring. “I’ve been given intelligence that you don’t like Indian food.” Fury glares, eye comically wide as his smile fades. “Can you confirm?”

“Accurate. It’s too spicy.” Alex clenches his jaw, looking right back at him. “I like Thai better.”

“What I’m taking from this,” Nick says to him, very seriously, “is that there is a severe lack of culinary skill in your unit.”

“Affirmative,” Alex sighs. “Dad’s good at breakfast, though.”

“Well then,” Fury says, crossing his arms. “I guess it’s breakfast for dinner.”

They end up ordering Italian.

-

Fury stays long enough that Alex falls asleep on the couch, exhausted by the round of Risk they’ve all been subjected to.

It turns out, somewhat unsurprisingly, that Fury gives as little quarter as Natasha, but as a combined team Alex and Bucky definitely held their own, leaving Steve to fend for himself against the improbable juggernaut Fury had accumulated near Papua New Guinea.

“Well,” Fury says, as Steve makes a start on the dishes and Bucky disappears to haul Alex to bed. “I have to be honest-”

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Steve says, scrubbing a plate.

“Hilarious.” Fury leans up on the counter by the sink, gracing Steve with a penetrating stare. “This was a good decision.”

“Yeah,” Steve says after a while. “Seems that way.”

-

Steve gropes for his phone, slamming a hand awkwardly on the corner of the bedside table. When he finally manages to bring it close enough to his face to read the message, all it says is _got a minute?_ from a number he doesn’t have saved.

“You heading out?” Bucky asks, wide awake.

“Natasha’s just in another timezone,” Steve mutters, slipping out of bed. “I’ll be right back.”

Bucky looks, for a second, like he’s going to say something. He doesn’t, just rolls over and takes the covers with him. He probably won’t go back to sleep, but neither will Steve. If it was a mission, she’d have just told him to be ready at a certain time, or Tony would have had Jarvis send that stupid, blaring alert noise Steve is constantly turning off only to have Tony somehow turn it back on. This is something of a greyer area since Alex arrived, leaving Natasha and Steve on two different sides of an obligation to supervise despite their friendship.

Steve takes a second before he calls her to make sure there’s no other message forthcoming, but his phone stays quiet. He hits the button. “Nat? What’s up?”

“Oh,” Natasha says dryly, “the usual.” She doesn’t elaborate, but Steve doesn't really expect her to. He’s just glad there are no explosions in the background. Even so, he’s a little jumpy.

“So you just wanted to text me suddenly at three in the morning?”

Nat doesn’t say anything for a few seconds, and Steve hears the distant doppler of a car engine in the background. “How’d it go with Nick?”

Steve laughs, a little bit relieved. “He beat us at Risk.”

Natasha’s laugh is muffled in return, but a small knot of pressure in Steve’s chest eases, just by a fraction. “May I speak to James, please?”

“Uh,” Steve manages, intelligently, “I’ll-”

“I owe him an apology,” Natasha explains. “We’ve- spoken’s not really the right word, but that’s as close as it gets.”

Steve remembers the day Bucky started coming home looking satisfied, for want of a better word, the day he started setting up in the kitchen instead of standing front of the chalkboard, turning a stick of chalk over and over in his hand before sketching out whatever he was privately decoding in his head.

It’s more than she’d tell anybody else. Steve knows it, knows her, and can’t find it in himself to be bitter. She’s a friend. Whatever she wants to say to Bucky, it’s obviously private. “Sure, I’ll-” he turns around to head back into the bedroom but Bucky is already in the doorway, paused with one hand on the frame, looking rumpled but alert. “Uh, here,” he says to both of them, passing the phone over.

Bucky smiles at him, lopsided, and takes the phone. He greets her in Russian. Steve has picked up enough to listen in if he wanted to but he decides to see what the prospects are for a midnight snack instead. The low hum of a one-sided conversation follows him, snatches of his name, of Alex’s. He ignores it and opens the fridge.

Thing is, Steve wants to know, but he can’t- can’t imagine ever wanting to intrude, to strip away whatever privacy Bucky chooses to keep. There’s just been enough of that in his long, long lifetime. Steve takes a mouthful of cold pad thai and looks out the window, watching the flickering of distant ambulance lights.

Bucky has never said where it is exactly that he goes to work off steam, but Steve knows he goes somewhere, and knows he comes back bruised sometimes, tape sticking to the creases between his fingers. Steve would have to be an idiot not to know he and Natasha get something mutual out of it.

Steve has never installed any of Tony’s punching bags in the apartment.

“Yeah, I’ll pass him over,” Bucky says, approaching. “She wants to talk to you.”

Steve swaps the phone for the takeout box, handing Bucky the fork as well. Bucky digs in, leaning on the counter, a distant, familiar look in his eyes.

“Hey,” Steve says into the phone, “you okay? Really?”

“I’m fine, Steve.” There’s a note of warmth in her voice that wasn’t there before. Steve takes a breath, exhale coming a little easier. “Let’s just say I’m done keeping tabs, okay? I didn’t like doing it anyway.”

Steve watches Bucky for a second, taking in the sleep-crease on one cheek from the hard pillow he likes, the permanent shadows beneath his eyes, the way he doesn’t automatically reach for a shirt anymore. “Thanks, Nat,” he says, finally. “You sure you don’t need a hand?”

“Sit this one out,” she tells him. “Unless your feminine wiles need brushing up.”

“Well, I’m a _little_ rusty,” he drawls.

“Can’t be everywhere, Rogers.” A car horn. A muffled curse. “Stay put. I’ll be back. Tease Stark a little for me?”

Steve swallows. “Deal.”

Natasha hangs up.

“Didn’t wish her a safe trip?” Bucky asks, still smiling half a smile, like he can’t quite stop himself.

“Would you?”

Bucky swallows his mouthful. “Nah.” He swirls the fork around in the noodles for a second, but doesn’t seem in a hurry to eat any more. “Not gonna ask what she said?”

Steve thinks about it for a second, wondering where the weight is, in the question. “Figure you’ll tell me if you think I need to know.”

“She is satisfied,” Bucky says slowly, “that all parameters of her obligation to supervise the transfer have been met.”

Steve releases the last of his breath. “Coming back to bed?”

“In a minute.” Bucky says, left hand gripping the counter-top. “I need a minute.”

Steve takes a step closer, takes the carton out of his grasp and sets it aside. He folds him into his arms, relieved when instead of stiffening, Bucky exhales, loosening his death hold on the marble. “Bucky,” Steve says quietly, stepping back, “did you think she wouldn’t be?”

Bucky doesn’t say anything, which is really an answer all by itself. He bites his lip, scrubbing a hand over his face before he looks back at Steve. “I dunno, Steve, what did you think? We’re a couple guys who’ve killed more people between them than-”

“Hey,” Steve says, gripping his shoulder hard, hoping his conviction is visible, wishing it was a tangible thing he could take out and show, something Bucky would be able to touch when he needed to. “You- anyone can see it, how good this is.”

Bucky rasps out a laugh, laying a hand on the side of Steve’s neck, stroking a thumb up under the hinge of his jaw, just staring at him, sleepy eyes heavy-lidded and very, very old. “What’s that saying? Can’t choose your family?”

“It’s bullshit,” Steve says. “Pretty sure you can choose whatever you want. It’s the twenty-first century.”

Bucky’s half-smile creeps in again, just a hint, a softening. “So they tell me,” he says, letting go. “What were you saying about bed?”

13.

The thing about Doombots, Steve has learned, is that they behave an awful lot like angry hornets with no concept of personal injury. In a sense, that’s exactly what they are, but the reality of the situation is that it matters less what they are than what they do. Steve would rather they didn't destroy half of downtown, in general.

They win the skirmish when Sam manages to drop an EMP grenade into the one with the control center’s chest cavity while Thor is holding it down.

Sam comes away singed. Steve has a handful of broken fingers slowly crunching themselves back together and Thor, as usual, is making it look like bleeding is something he does on purpose.

“How are you doing?” Sam is leaning over him, propped on one elbow.

Steve flexes his hand, feeling the joints catch unpleasantly. “Fine.”

“Uh huh.” Sam holds out a hand. Steve takes it, letting himself be hauled up. Same gives him a once over, stepping back. "Never thought I’d be saying this, but shouldn’t you be at home? You know there are seven other people who could have taken this call.” He claps Steve on the shoulder, taking some of the sting out of his words. “These bastards showed up at two in the morning. Thought for sure you’d pass it on.”

Steve doesn’t really know how to respond. “I’ve fought Doombots before,” he says slowly, wincing at the squelch of blood in his left glove. “I’m going home now, anyway.”

“Uh huh.” Sam shakes his head, bits of plaster raining off his shoulders. “Want a lift?”

“Captain, I could not help but overhear,” Thor says, throwing a dead Doombot onto the pile he’s making before coming over to where Steve and Sam are leaning on each other. “I would be most pleased to offer you transport, as I believe myself to be the swiftest of us.” He pauses. “I mean no offense,” he offers to Sam, “it has also been quite some while since last I saw your son. I believe he has grown?”

Steve can’t stop the tired sigh, trying for a smile. “Like a weed,” he agrees. “Amazing what good nutrition can do.”

Thor grins. “Then it is settled.”

Sam, worryingly, doesn’t say anything at all.

-

Thor deposits them on the roof. Steve doesn’t think he’s ever going to get used to the view of the city from the unprotected air, or the way his stomach drops every time they go over the river. Steve prefers the road, but sometimes it’s just too much, too many people, too great a task to go back to the tower to clean himself up before riding the bike home.

In retrospect though, he probably should have changed before coming back. He doesn’t hide what he does--that would be futile and disingenuous--but there’s a difference between coming home bruised and coming home still covered in blood.

He needn’t have worried though. There’s nobody there.

Steve can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. Bucky is no stranger to any of this, but Alex is- hell. Alex is thirteen now. His biggest concerns are school and getting away with drawing dicks on the chalkboard. He doesn’t need to see the evidence of what Steve does in exchange for his safety. It would be unfair.

“Ah, I see we have missed them,” Thor says, something unidentifiable in his voice.

“Yeah,” Steve says, dropping his helmet on the kitchen counter, vowing to clean it later. “Anybody want a drink before they go?”

Sam tilts his head, eyes narrowed. “I won’t say no to water.”

“I feel I must take my leave, Captain,” Thor says, apologetically. “Please pass on my regards.”

Steve assures him he will, thanks him for the lift, and watches him go before grabbing Sam his asked-for water, suddenly feeling ever second of his body’s slow crawl back to normal. A bone in his thumb crackles back into the joint, releasing a pain Steve hadn’t even really registered.

“So where are they?” Sam asks, perching on one of the kitchen stools.

Steve rests his chin in his right hand, suddenly at a loss. “What day is it?”

“Steve, man, it’s Saturday.” Sam’s look of concern is definitive now, creasing into a frown.

“Right.” Steve takes a deep breath and straightens up. “They might be playing hide and seek.”

Sam shakes his head. “Is that a euphemism?”

Steve laughs, surprising himself. “Have you ever tried to find a trained assassin who doesn’t want to be tracked?” Those months still stand out knife-edge sharp in his mind; the creeping sense of futility they’d both felt, the constant, pervasive sense of being watched, tested, pursued in turn. For Steve’s part, it had absolutely been worth it, but he’s never really known how to thank Sam for his perseverance, aside from just holding himself to the dedication to watch his back. It’s the least he can do.

“As a matter of fact I have,” Sam says, playing along for a second before crossing his arms. “Hide and seek. This a regular thing?”

Steve nods, thinking of all the times he’s caught Alex hanging out in places like the laundry basket, or hanging off the fire escape by his fingers, waiting for Bucky to find him. Recently they've taken to playing around the neighborhood, teaching Alex all the nooks and crannies Bucky has known since his very first sleepless nights. “Alex never wins.”

“And you’re not playing with them.” Sam leans back on the stool a little, plaster dust on his skin lending him an inadvertently bird-like quality. The focus he’s levelling at Steve is anything but predatory, but it’s clearly a searching question, and right now, Steve is just too tired.

“Bucky’s retired,” Steve says. “I’m not.”

“Uh huh.” Sam drinks the rest of his water in silence, clearly mulling something over. “Well, I should get going. I’m due back in DC in the morning.” He claps Steve on the good shoulder as he leaves, suit still raining bits of debris as he shakes it out. “Get a good night’s sleep, man. Maybe think about passing the buck every so often. It won’t kill you.”

Steve has no idea what to say, so he doesn’t say anything, silently wishing him a safe flight.

The apartment feels very empty when he’s gone. Steve takes a shower, throws an ice pack on his hand more for the sensation than for any beneficial effect it might have, and sacks out.

When he wakes up, there’s a steaming pot of coffee on the counter and a note in Bucky’s re-learned print under one of the cracked mugs they’ve picked up somewhere, ‘H’ on the side fading with every wash. _Botanical Gardens. Biology project._

Steve pours himself a cup and looks outside. It’s a beautiful day. Manhattan might have another crater in it, but Brooklyn is still in once piece.

He downs the coffee and goes to find his sneakers.

15.

“No, by the bottom of the blade, like this.” Bucky takes the paring knife out of Alex’s hand, two fingers gripping delicately near the sharp edge. “It’s a flick, not a toss, see?”

He buries it in the living room wall, thoroughly unconcerned with the wallpaper. Steve guesses it’s kind of ugly anyway. He should probably object, but honestly, there are situations in which knowing how to throw a knife would be pretty useful, and given their lives he’s not going to dissuade them.

He closes the door quietly, not wanting to disturb Alex’s concentration, even if Bucky definitely knows he’s there.

Alex grabs the next smallest knife off the... pile of them... on the coffee table, frowns in concentration to the point where Steve, lurking by the door, thinks his tongue might be sticking out the side of his mouth, and tries to mimic Bucky’s throw.

The knife goes flying, clattering against the far window before dropping tip first directly into the floorboards. One of the cats skitters out of the way, highly offended. “Shit,” says Alex, blinking.

Bucky laughs, an unused, rusty sound, but it’s still a laugh. “Try again.” He goes over to the wall, yanking the paring knife out by the hilt. “Maybe Steve can join in too, he’s pretty good at this.”

“Aw man,” Alex looks back at Steve, then flops theatrically down on the couch. “You saw that?”

“Yeah,” Steve confirms. “I think we could both use some pointers.”

“You guys are the worst,” Alex says, voice muffled by his elbow, thrown over his face.

Steve drops his gym bag and comes around to where Bucky is standing, absently flicking the knife hilt-blade-hilt in his right hand. “Have you been doing this all afternoon?”

Bucky glances at the wall, liberally peppered with gouges. “A while,” he concedes, almost smiling. “Here.”

Steve takes the offered knife, weighting it briefly before aiming it at one of Bucky’s old holes. It lands slightly off, going in at an angle. “Hm. Rusty.”

“Oh right, rusty,” Alex mutters sarcastically. “Boo hoo.”

Steve knees him in the side, just a little. “Hey, want to come to the hardware store?”

“Why?” Alex sits up, blinking suspiciously. “What’s at the hardware store? Are we buying more knives? This apartment is like, full of knives. Dad keeps a knife in the shoe closet.”

Bucky looks at the ceiling, face tilted away. Steve knows he’s doing his level best to avoid an excess of expression, but Steve can read it now, after so long, amusement everywhere in the relaxed slope of his shoulders, the easy curl of his fingers.

“I thought I’d go get some cork.” Steve says. “If we’re gonna practice.”

“Normal parents would be telling me I’m going to end up in juvie, for the record,” Alex says, grabbing his phone.

Bucky laughs again, a small, helpless bark. “Steve once pushed a guy right in the East River because he was messing with a girl, then jumped right in after him ‘cause he couldn’t swim.” Bucky says it like he’s only just remembering it. Maybe he is, but Steve can't help the surge of warmth the feels at the memory. He can still taste the briny water, can still feel the drag of air in his lungs that rasped for weeks after. Bucky glances at him, smirking. “He’s never been normal.”

“If I’m getting dragged out to do old guy shopping, you have to come too,” Alex informs him, “or Steve might try to buy me khakis again.”

Bucky puts a hand over his eyes, lips curling under it as he laughs silently.

“You used to like khakis,” Steve says, reaching for his keys.

Alex rolls his eyes. “I was nine,” he says. “Nine year olds are stupid.”

Steve just smiles, amazed as always at how fast he’s grown. “Well the sooner we get this done, the sooner you can go back to prepping for juvie.”

Alex mutters something as he walks out the door, sticking his earbuds in his ears. “Better not give him ideas,” Bucky says, falling into step next to Steve, watching Alex’s back. “He already knows how to choke someone out in under twelve seconds.”

“Can’t say I’m not a little relieved at that,” Steve tells him honestly.

“Me either,” Bucky says, pulling his glasses out of his pocket before they leave the building.

-

Alex goes out on Friday night, heading one station down to see Clint. Steve thinks it might be because Kate is often in evidence these days, but he’s not about to mention it if Alex isn’t.

Steve doesn’t really know what to do with himself sometimes, when there’s nothing pressing. He churns through some emails he’s been ignoring, then finds himself on the couch absently channel surfing until he hits the news.

There’s some kind of retrospective on the damage done to New York on CNN, sombre enough that he stops, fixated on the archival footage of the invasion playing in snatches.

Bucky pulls the remote out of his fingers, startling him off the couch before he’s really aware of it, standing in the middle of the living room in silence as Bucky turns off the TV.

“You want to go for a run?” Bucky asks, when the silence has stretched out long enough that neither of them really seems to know how to break it.

Steve breathes a sigh of relief. “Yeah.”

16.

“No, like, I just think it’s kind of dumb that people believe in this old man on a cloud watching everything they do.” Alex pokes mutinously at his salad, looking as dubious at its contents as he is about the existence of god. “Why should some huge intelligence with the power of creation give a shit what we do?”

Steve glances at Bucky, trying desperately not to smile. “Should I tell him about Galactus?” Steve asks.

“We were both frozen for Galactus,” Bucky says, spearing some spinach with more prejudice than is strictly necessary.

“Dr. Richards does a really bad Silver Surfer impression, according to Bruce,” Steve says, waiting to see how Alex reacts.

“You guys _always_ do this,” he snaps, exasperated. “What the hell is a silver surfer? Is Galactus a god? Have you met another god?”

“You’ve met Thor,” Bucky points out, dismembering a tomato with the tip of his knife. “He’s a god and he babysat you once.”

“He’s an alien,” Alex says, pushing his chair back from the table. He crosses his arms over his broadening chest with a huff, blowing his hair out of his eyes. Steve thinks maybe he’s wearing eyeliner, and wonders where he got it from. His wardrobe has started to consist of Steve’s old black shirts, ripped jeans in various sizes and at least one pair of boots that have migrated from Bucky’s closet to his. Steve can’t help but be charmed by it. He remembers when Bucky had first started noticing his appearance, showing up at school with his hair combed just so, not the way his mother did it, the way he’d started shining his shoes just that little bit more. Girls had noticed. Steve had noticed.

Steve shoots an amused glance at him. He looks so different now. That, more than anything, is enough to remind him how very long ago it was that they were Alex’s age. He’d had plenty of questions then, too. “Yes,” he says, turning back to Alex, still glaring mutinously at them, “but who’s to say all gods aren’t aliens?”

“This is stupid,” Alex announces, “you can’t just use a- a logical fallacy on me and smile like it’s a joke.” He rolls his eyes. “Why can’t we ever have a real conversation?”

Bucky freezes, entire body going rigid. Steve watches Alex notice, all his good humor slowly leaking away. “Alex-” Steve starts.

“Forget it,” Alex mutters, “it doesn’t matter. Can I go? I have homework.”

Steve nods mutely, watching as Alex grabs his plate and dumps it on the counter before disappearing into his room, door closing with a bang. A few seconds later the low thump of music comes seeping out from under it, but the majority of it is contained, only the bass rumbling through the floorboards.

Bucky lets out a shaky breath, pinching at the bridge of his nose with his right hand, left limp in his lap. It hasn’t been in good shape for a while, ever since the last time Bucky couldn’t sleep and went off in the middle of the night to find Nat and convince her to spend their usual few hours beating the hell out of each other, but Steve isn’t going to mention it if Bucky isn’t. There’s only one person around who he trusts to repair it, and they haven’t exactly been Tony’s favourite people for the last few years. Or well, ever since he’d gotten ahold of Fury’s files on the Winter Soldier.

“Sam says he’s just hormonal,” Steve offers, “it’s normal.”

“As if any of us would know normal if it bit us in the ass,” Bucky mutters, staring at the ceiling.

“I got bitten in the ass last week,” Steve says, wincing at the remembered feeling of strange, mutant animal teeth snapping shut.

Bucky doesn’t say anything for a long time, still not looking at him. “Thor could have handled that.” Bucky glances sideways at him. “They were from Asgard. His ballpark, his baseballs, y’know?”

The saying’s not exactly right, but then, it’s a far cry from the days when Bucky only spoke in facts or single words. Still though, it’s easier to focus on the form than the content of what he’s said, because Steve just has no idea how to respond. “We’re a team,” he ventures, unsure why there’s something a little like panic bubbling up from somewhere just out of reach at the suggestion that he’d have been the one to drop the responsibility of being an Avenger. It’s- he can’t think about it.

“Yeah. I know.” Bucky finally looks at him, and Steve has to look back. He looks tired, Steve realises, a little drawn. “Natalia offered me a mission.”

Steve thinks he’s going to black out for a second, focus narrowing down to just a knee-jerk extrapolation, potentialities spooling out from this point: Bucky says yes, and undoes years and years of recovery. Bucky says yes and discovers this is what he’s been missing. Bucky says yes and becomes the Winter Soldier again.

The moment passes and Steve can breathe again, but his mouth is dry, his eyes gritty. “Oh?” he manages, around a tongue too thick for his mouth.

“I told her I’d think about it,” Bucky says, flexing his left hand. It grinds, ever so slightly. “Think you could call Stark, ask him to do a maintenance run?”

“Here.” Steve tosses him his cell phone. “He’ll pick up.”

Bucky grabs it out of the air, reflexes lightning-fast, painfully enhanced. He opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, then clearly decides not to, instead ducking out the window and heading up to roof.

Steve watches him go, feeling as though there’s a weight in his gut, fists itching for the rough canvas of a bag. Instead, he grabs the plates left on the table and goes to run the dishwasher. It can wait, he tells himself. It can wait.

-

Steve can’t remember the last time they went up to the tower together. It’s not the kind of thing they do. Bucky usually meets Natasha somewhere neutral, and they go to the gym they’re both members of where Natasha knows the owner and spend hours slamming each other into walls and mats and floors. Bucky always comes back satisfied, if not happy.

Steve can’t watch. It’s not anything to do with him.

His workouts usually consist of him taking the bike uptown, going straight to the basement in the tower and setting the punching bags on a level Tony has unhelpfully labelled ‘Einstein,’ then going at it until his knuckles bleed.

Walking in the door side by side feels strange. Ominous.

 _Just come to the lab,_ Tony had said, according to Bucky, and hung up.

Steve is gratified that nobody stops them on the way in. They ride the elevator down with Bucky staring straight ahead, hands in his pockets. He’s wearing his glasses, and he hasn’t said a word all morning.

“You really don’t have to do this,” Steve says, not reaching for him. Bucky would flinch away, and Steve doesn’t want to make this worse for him. That’s not what this is about. “We can ask Bruce.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything. Instead, the elevator doors open to a blast of sound, Tony’s usual wall of noise thrown up like a shield. Bucky takes one look at the lab, at the workbench, tools spread out in a haphazard fan, and goes white. “Not here,” he whispers, slamming a hand down on the buttons. The door slides closed, miraculously obeying the command. The noise fades, leaving just the two of them in the small space, Bucky taking slow, deep breaths, setting a deliberate rhythm.

Steve places himself at arm's length. “Okay,” he says quietly, “we’ll ask him to make a house call. He owes me one.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything. Not a word.

As soon as they’re topside he’s gone, disappearing into the first likely-looking alleyway. Steve could follow him, but he won’t. It’s not his business, even if all he wants right now is to grab Bucky and never let him go. Ultimately though, the things he’s fighting will always be in his head, and Steve can’t do it for him, no matter how much he wishes he could.

-

“Popsicles,” Tony peers past Steve at Bucky on the couch, then over at Alex before he even sets foot inside the door. He has a pair of huge, gold sunglasses on. It’s ten at night. He’s three hours late. “Spawn.”

Alex, doing a handstand against the wall, drops back down, self-consciously straightening his t-shirt. “Steve,” Alex says in his general direction, “Why is Tony Stark in our apartment?”

Bucky still hasn’t said a word all night. Alex has been on eggshells since getting home from school, jittery and nervous at Bucky’s obvious disturbance. Steve has done his best, but it’s a downswing, and they all have their ways of dealing with it. Alex does gymnastic exercises in the living room. Steve’s been for a run and now he’s trying to draw. None of them have eaten.

"Well," Tony says, raising both eyebrows, "if that isn't the most uncanny thing I've seen in a while. It’s almost like you were created in a lab."

Steve stiffens.

Bucky’s eyes focus like someone’s flipped a switch, his entire body contracting as he vaults over the back of the couch and stalks his way to the door. Tony looks up at him over the obnoxious frames of his shades, both eyebrows raised. "That struck a nerve."

"Leave him out of it," Bucky says. His voice is a dangerous monotone, all inflection completely scrubbed.

Tony goes very still for a second before he shrugs extravagantly, hands wide. "Duly noted, T-800. So do you want me to take a look at that cobbled together hunk of scraps or not?"

Bucky steps back, turns around and walks calmly into the kitchen.

"Charming as always," Tony says to Steve, rocking back on his heels. “I guess I’m taking that as a yes?”

Steve doesn’t get headaches anymore, but he’s sure he’d have one, if it were possible. As it is, it still feels a little like there’s too much pressure in his skull, pushing against the back of his eyes. “Thanks for coming,” he says, trying his best to be nice. “Would you like something to drink?”

“I’m brown-bagging,” Tony says matter-of-factly, pulling a flask out of his pocket, briefcase in the other rattling ominously. “Figured I’d come prepared, boy scout motto and all that jazz.” He takes a swig for show before he shoves it back out of sight, pushing his glasses back up his face. “What are the odds of this going well, I’m in a betting mood.”

Alex slams the door of his bedroom so hard the windows rattle.

-

“Does this hurt?” Tony's tools make a strange hum, deep in the fibrous wiring of Bucky's left arm. Steve doesn't really want to look but he can't stop himself, peeking over Tony's shoulder to see. It looks like a mess, cables of components connecting part-to-part, all suspended in a gel matrix Tony has had to cut into, clamps holding it aside.

Bucky's right fingers twitch. "It's fine," he says, which isn't an answer at all.

Tony shrugs and gets back to work. "You know," he rambles, still keeping up a steady stream of chatter, covering Bucky's stiff silence, “I don’t make social calls for just anybody.” He snips something. Bucky bites his lip, staring at the wall. “Maybe I’m growing as a person,” Tony continues, jabbing at something with the very tip of the glowing soldering tool he’s using, smell of scorched metal permeating the kitchen. Steve wants to shake him.

“You’re a fuckin’ saint,” Bucky mutters, right knuckles clenched white on the table.

Tony drops a tool, letting it clatter. He picks up another one in complete silence, going back to work. Finally, he closes a panel, then another, fitting them carefully back in line with each other. “How many is that now, comrade?”

Steve has never wanted to punch someone so much in his entire life, right at this moment, but it’s Bucky who clenches his left fist, then flexes it, intricate mechanisms humming gently in the joints, looking Tony straight in the eyes. “We both know we’ll never be even,” he says quietly. “You want me to apologize again? I'm not gonna beg.”

“Save it,” Tony says, packing his case by sweeping all the tools off the table right into it. “Until next time, Terminator. I’d say ‘I’ll be back’ but that’s your line.” He gives them both the most sarcastic salute Steve has ever personally been the recipient of, then stalks towards the door.

He opens it to see Alex, glowering, not even trying to pretend he hasn’t been listening.

“Uncanny,” Tony repeats matter-of-factly, stepping around him. “Pepper says to come to the next party,” he tells them over his shoulder, and then he’s gone.

-

Alex watches Tony leave in total, rigid silence, then announces with all the gravity he can muster, “That guy is a _dick._ ”

Bucky taps his left hand on the kitchen table, fingers clicking through in a rolling staccato sequence, one after another. Steve isn’t sure what it is he’s feeling, but Steve himself is angry enough to be restless, spoiling to chase Tony down and give him a piece of his mind.

Bucky sighs, looking at his hand. “He has his reasons,” he says, crossing his arms, long curve of metal winging his shoulder out as it moves.

He’s about to get up when Alex just- Steve can honestly say he’s never seen him like this before, his familiar face creasing into something new, hurt and angry and scared all at once. “ _What reasons?_ You act like I don’t- like I can’t handle anything about your life, even if I have to see you in history books that say you died in the forties!” He takes a step closer, pushing himself right in between them, including Steve in the force of his glare. “It’s like you keep forgetting some agent whose face I never saw pulled me out of a lab and told me I was going somewhere better before dropping me off with _strangers._ ” His voice breaks on the last word, a high note creeping in where none has been for months. “It’s like you forget what I- what I am sometimes.”

“Alex,” Steve starts, but Alex cuts him off, holds an over-sized hand right up to his face, stopping him dead.

“Alexei,” he corrects. “Do you know who named me? A medical tech who got tired of calling me by a serial number. You think I don’t remember, but I _do._ ” He takes a deep, shaking breath, biting into his bottom lip so hard Steve is afraid it’s going to start bleeding, but he keeps talking before Steve has a chance to move. “It’s not that hard to guess why they cloned you,” he says to Bucky, finally going quiet, “I’ve never had a cold. I’ve never not known that if I hurt myself I’d heal faster than normal- as fast as you. So tell me why Tony Stark hates you, because I’m going to find out.”

There's a long, long pause. The air in the kitchen takes on a kind of expectant heaviness as Bucky stares up at Alex, looking into the younger version of his own face as though he's seeing it for the first time all over again. Steve is still reeling when Bucky inhales, a slow, deep sniper's breath, ready to pull the trigger on the exhale.

“I killed his parents,” Bucky kicks himself back from the table so hard one of the legs groans in protest at the impact.

Alex opens his mouth, then closes it again, eyes wide. "I- what are you-"

"I cut the brakes on their car and made sure they drove over a cliff. I checked the wreckage, after.” Steve hasn’t seen him cry in years, but there’s a glimmer of something in his eyes, a shard of the expression Steve used to catch him with sometimes, curled into himself on the roof in the morning after a bad night. "He hates me less than he should."

Alex makes a noise not unlike a sob, looking down at Bucky from his newly-gained height, eyes wide enough to be almost panicked. "Why didn't you tell me-"

"I’m not sorry for wanting to spare you knowing that’s what you were made for _._ ” Bucky doesn't move, jaw clenched as he looks back. “There’s a reason all this isn’t on the internet like the rest of it.”

Steve wants so badly to jump into this fight, but there’s nothing he can say to soften the blow. If anything, he’s been complicit in his assumption that there’d be more time, more recovery, more distance from what Bucky was made to do, but there isn’t. It was naive to think Alex needed it; Steve and Bucky are the ones who’ve never quite stopped trying to make sense of the past.

Alex stands stock still, breathing short and shallow, face falling just before he catches himself, blinking furiously. “Did you- did you want to?”

“I needed to complete the mission,” Bucky says, staring up at him. “You don't - I can’t explain what it’s like, not to know you can _want_.”

Alex shakes his head, eyes closing. “How many?” he asks, but he’s not speaking English, words coming out in the language of his early childhood, Russian still as fluid on his tongue as it was then. Steve has taught himself a lot, in the last ten years, but he still has to work to understand, caught off guard by the quick slip back in time.

“More than I can remember,” Bucky replies in kind. “Sometimes I think it’s all come back and then I taste something, or smell something, or there's just something in the angle of the light and I remember- I remember more. Others.”

Steve has never heard the words from him, even though he’s guessed at what he’s saying. Natasha has offered him a mission, and Bucky has hardly slept since. Steve knows what it is he’s afraid to see. Maybe it’s easier to speak about, hidden in different consonants, longer vowels, with someone who might have shared the same fate. Steve puts a hand on Bucky’s right shoulder, gripping hard. There’s nothing he can say, so he doesn’t say anything. After a second, Bucky’s left hand grips down around his wrist, hard enough to bruise. Steve’s not letting go.

“This is why you let everyone think you’re dead,” Alex whispers, English seeping back in. “Why you- why didn’t you tell me _sooner,_ did you think I’d-”

“You were a kid,” Steve says quietly. “You deserved a chance to have a childhood.” Theirs had ended so young that sometimes Steve thinks it's been a small, constant mission for both of them, making sure Alex had time to be a child.

Alex looks between them, at the iron grip Bucky has on Steve’s wrist, at the way Steve isn’t even trying to pretend he’s not standing at Bucky’s shoulder the way he should have in 1945 and couldn’t, and just crumples, rushing forward in a flash of long limbs, arms going around Bucky as though he can’t believe he’s real. “I’m sorry,” he says, voice muffled. “I didn’t mean- I’m sorry.”

Bucky lets go of Steve, slowly unclenching his grip, and carefully, so, so carefully, pulls Alex closer. They’re all three of them too big for the space, but right now it doesn’t matter that Alex has to crouch to reach, that Bucky would have to dislodge him to get up, that Steve has to lean down to rub a slow circle over Alex’s spine like he used to when he still occasionally crawled into bed with them. It doesn’t matter at all.

-

They end up on the roof, curled up under the old blanket from the couch. It smells like cat and coffee and the particular scent Steve associates with home, all of them mixed together.

Alex is the first one to speak, looking out at the city's chaotic mess of buildings, lights, alleyways and avenues. "I know you were training me," he says, gesturing at their neighbourhood with a tiny little smile. "I don't know anyone else whose parents drop them off in sketchy parts of town then chase them home, or who congratulate them for remembering to carry a knife, like that time with Clint." He laughs, just slightly, just enough to shake his shoulders. "Thanks. For making it a game. It never used to be a game."

"I wanted you to be safe," Bucky says, following the line of his gaze instead of looking at him. "It was never a game for me."

Steve aches. He wasn't here for that, he realizes. He wasn't here to help Bucky make that decision. He wasn't here to see Alex spending hours throwing knives at their living room wall, only ever played hide and seek when he was home, just to lose spectacularly in the first hour. "You've never brought any friends home," Steve says, realization slowly dawning that Alex goes to friends' houses, but he's never hosted a party, never spent the night anywhere other than here or at Clint's, the only person nearby any of them trust implicitly. “The only birthday parties you had were full of our-”

“I don’t need to,” Alex says sharply. “I didn’t. I have friends. I never had those, before, but they don’t have lives like I do. It’d be kind of- I don’t know, it never seemed like something I should do. This is just... us.” He laughs a little, hugging an arm around his knees, other hand making an aborted kind of sweep, including all three of them. “For better or worse.”

Bucky pulls out a cigarette and lights it, breathing smoke out of his nose.

“Gimme that.” Alex grabs it, takes a drag, and coughs violently. “Okay, never mind. You can keep it.” He makes to hand it back, but Steve reaches over from Bucky’s other side and plucks it out of his fingers, taking a deep lungful before he gives it back to Bucky.

“What else do you want to know?” Steve asks him, trying not to let his voice waver, if this is where the night is going. It’s started to feel safe, their rooftop. Steve can’t believe he almost didn’t buy the top floor when he had a choice, thinking it would be too vulnerable. He’d taken a chance for the view.

Alex thinks for a second, one fingernail making its unconscious way between his teeth. “How did you meet?” he asks, and Bucky is the one who laughs loudest, a short, startled bark. “What?” Alex says, “Seems like the kind of thing most kids ask their parents. Tell me something good.”

“Some older kids threw Steve in a dumpster,” Bucky tells him, “for throwing a brick at them while they were harassin' a dog.”

Steve doesn’t remember that, at least, not that exactly. What he remembers is a broken nose, is the taste of blood between his teeth and a small, urgent core of rage, that people weren’t _better._ And then, a bigger, stronger body hauling him out, handing him a not very clean rag to stem the bleeding, sly blue eyes and _Jesus you’re even smaller up close. Whatsamatter with you?_

“I was always getting him in trouble,” Steve says slowly, thinking of a hand slipping through his fingers. “You should’a kept walking, huh?”

Alex leans into his side the way he used to for a second, before he sits up, face serious. “I’m gonna go stay at Clint’s for a little bit, okay?” He’s not really asking for permission, standing up and making his way to the fire escape, all deliberate movement and poise. He looks so much older than he actually is that Steve is momentarily stunned. “I’ll be back, I promise.”

Steve wants to stop him. He wants to jump up and drag him back between them, keep him as close and safe from harm as he possibly can, but he remembers Bucky’s grip, the way he’d said _at least he’ll have choices._ “Be safe,” Steve says instead, because it’s all he can do.

Bucky doesn’t say anything at all, smoke still drifting up around him as Alex nods once, and leaves.

The city isn’t silent, not ever, but the constant grind of sound is a distant second to the pounding blood in Steve’s ears, to the terrible, aching need to chase Alex down and bring him back. He doesn't. He can't.

“I’m taking the job,” Bucky announces, hours later, left hand catching the streetlights as he finishes the last cigarette in the box, smoking it down to the filter. "Natasha asked for my help. I want to do it."

Steve would be lying if he said he'd been expecting another answer.

-

Nat comes over in the morning, letting herself in with the key Steve gave her when he moved. She's never used it before, but this seems a good week for first times.

“Morning,” she says, hitching the bag she’s carrying higher on her shoulder, somehow juggling a tray of coffee from the nice place two blocks over as well as one of her many keychains, making it all look easy, as usual.

Steve nods at her from the kitchen counter. It’s Thursday and the house is too empty without Alex’s morning ritual. Steve hopes he’ll go to school, but he can’t make him. Clint sure as hell won’t, but Steve is doing his best not to think about it. “Morning.”

“Hey Rogers.” She looks around the empty kitchen, clearly clocking the shower. It’s been running for twenty minutes. “What’s the ETA on that?”

Steve shrugs. “Depends.” He’s not feeling that well-disposed towards her right now, despite how much he loves her.

Natasha shoots him an unimpressed look. “Spit it out,” she says, setting the coffee down.

Steve doesn’t know where to start, so he starts in the middle. “Do you think he’s ready for- to go back to that?”

“Have you asked him?” Natasha slides a coffee cup at him like a hockey puck, so hard Steve has to scramble to catch it. “Or are you still treating him like he’s going to break in half if you breathe on him wrong, because I have to tell you-”

The shower shuts off. After a second, Bucky exits the bathroom in a towel, hair loose and wet, plastered to his neck. “Almost ready,” he says to Nat, eyes skimming over Steve before he disappears into the bedroom.

Natasha turns the force of her attention on him again, all of her drawn tight as a bowstring. “When was the last time he asked _you_ whether you’re ready to go throwing yourself at every monster that comes through the-”

“That’s different!” Steve hisses, trying not to crush the coffee cup in his fist.

“It’s been eleven years, Steve. I need his help. It took us a while, but I trust him." Natasha glares at him, still looking ageless, elegant, dangerous. “How is it different?”

Bucky emerges from the bedroom wearing black. He smiles vestigially at Nat before opening the bag she’s brought with her, going through everything in it right there on their kitchen floor, counting every bullet with professional efficiency, hands cradling weapons Steve hasn't seen in a long time with the ease of long familiarity. A garrotte wire. Short-range EMPs. All the things Natasha always carries when she's on her own. All the things they were both trained and trained and trained to use.

Steve goes for a run.

Bucky watches him leave with a strange, sad look on his face, but by the time Steve gets back, they’re gone.

-

Alex comes back on Sunday night, just around the time he usually goes to bed before school. Steve doesn’t really know anything about teenagers, barring the one he lives with, but Alex is conscientious enough that Steve thinks maybe it’s slightly more than just his nature. Bucky liked school, no matter how much he’d always tried to pretend he didn’t, but he’d been a night owl even before they could really afford to light their apartment after dark, always coming alive as the sun was going down.

Alex goes to bed early enough that someone, somewhere, must have drummed it into him, because god knows Steve and Bucky have never been able to keep to regular hours.

“Hey,” he says quietly, one of Clint’s purple hoodies hanging too big across his shoulders. One of the cats slinks over to twine itself around his ankles, meowing plaintively. “Hey, Our Cat.”

“Hi.” Steve doesn’t know what to do. On the rare occasions when they’re home together and Bucky isn’t, it’s usually because he’s at the store, not halfway across the world doing something that could get him killed, or worse. “Are you okay?”

It must show in his voice, because Alex sighs, dropping his backpack on the floor without ceremony. “You’re supposed to tell me that’s Not Our Cat,” he says, with a tired smile. There are dark circles under his eyes and he’s covered in dog hair. Steve cannot remember a single time in the last ten years that he has felt so useless as a parent. “Dad’s gone, huh?”

“Yeah.” Steve gets up, takes a step forward, then stops.

Alex is staring at him like he’s never really seen him before, slow sweep of his eyes from head to toe feeling at least as penetrating as anything Fury has ever graced him with. “Sucks, doesn’t it?”

Steve remembers with sudden, visceral clarity, the taste of blood in his mouth the second he saw Bucky in his uniform in that alleyway behind the movie theater, the way his heart threatened to beat right out of his chest when he found out Bucky had gotten his first orders. He remembers being angry the fight was over, because he couldn’t go over to Europe with him. “Is it always this bad?” he asks aloud, not really expecting an answer.

Alex, though, thinks for a while, head tilted just slightly, exactly the way Bucky does. “For Dad, I think,” he says, shoving his hands in the big front pocket of his borrowed sweatshirt. “I’m kinda used to it though. It’s just- it’s always _you_ who’s going off to fight monsters. Dad’s only ever fought his own, before.” His lips twist, entire face suddenly older with the movement. “Or I guess, since I’ve been around anyway.”

Steve can’t move. Alex is looking at his shoes, shoulders hunched. Steve can’t stand to see him like this, but he can’t get around the elephant in the room, any more than he can bring himself to step around the anger he can feel building up inside him, directionless and futile. “I’m not your dad, am I?”

Alex looks straight at him, fear plain on his face. “Not the way he is, no.” He swallows, jaw tight with determination. “I- you’re my dad too,” he says, “but it’s not- it’s different. Yeah.”

Steve misses Bucky like lost years, suddenly. He misses him the way he didn’t think he could ever miss anyone again; he’d know what to do here, faced with Alex’s perfect, painful honesty, but he’s not. Steve has spent years trying not to hurt him, but he’s never- they’ve never talked about this, what happens when Steve leaves them behind. “He’s coming back,” Steve says, to himself as much as to Alex.

“Promise?” Alex sounds young again for just a second, before the age comes back to his eyes.

Steve shakes his head. “I don’t think I can really-”

“You’re so-” Alex shakes his head, finally unsticking himself from the floor, crossing the distance, cautiously wrapping his arms around Steve, taller than he can really deal with but still growing, all limbs and bony joints. “You’re so bad at this,” Alex says, speaking into Steve’s chest.

“I know,” Steve tells him, feeling every word.

-

Steve tries to sleep and can’t, so when Alex surfaces bleary-eyed at around eight, Steve has already been up for hours. The apartment is very clean, everything that could be scrubbed quietly already scoured and put away. He’s had more coffee than is really necessary, but it doesn’t do anything for him except, today, remind him of the dead, of Gabe Jones and his talk of French roasts and Falsworth’s good-natured ribbing about American swill being deeply inferior to good tea.

He misses them less often than he used to, and that hurts as well. He thinks maybe somebody told him once that that was the way of grief, that you carried it around until it just became a part of you, and you stopped noticing the weight after a while, but he never stopped missing Bucky, in the years he thought he was lost. It ached like a lost tooth on cold mornings.

Steve has never lost the habit of probing the space on the left side of his jaw where Jacob Lipnitz knocked one of his teeth out behind the deli. Steve doesn’t even remember why, just that they’d fought like stray dogs, Steve going in low and vicious, Jacob getting in a lucky swing right on the jaw. Of course it had ended with Steve spitting blood, shocked when a molar came with it. He remembers pointing out the alley to Peggy, on his last day as something laughably breakable, body too small for all he needed to do with it.

Bucky’d scrounged some ice from a guy he knew and wouldn’t tell Steve what he’d had to give in exchange because it was July and there was none to spare. He’d just held the sliver of it up to Steve’s aching jaw and told him not to be such an ass. _Where’d we be if you got your head broken over nothin’ Steve?_

The tooth never grew back. There was no reason to expect it to, and it was, miraculously, only the one, but Steve tongues at it anyway sometimes, as though his body still isn’t quite sure what to make of the absence.

The apartment, in the hours before Alex wakes up, feels as empty as Steve’s tiny, one-room shoebox did when Bucky went off to Basic.

Alex takes one look at him and laughs. “Sorry,” he says, unrepentant. “I was kind of just wondering if I’d, I dunno, find you doing push-ups in your underwear and pretending you were fine, not getting all OCD about the dishes.”

Steve has stacked them in the drying rack in descending size order. “I should probably make you go to school.”

“You could try,” Alex agrees, blinking sleepily in the sunlight that’s started to creep through the kitchen. “Dad used to tell me that if I beat him there we’d get pancakes for dinner. Then he’d disappear out the window.”

Steve laughs, startled by the sound. “Sounds like fun. You too smart for that now?”

“Too lazy,” Alex lies, pouring himself a cup of coffee. He’s never been lazy. As long as Steve has known Alex, he’s always been game, energetic, willing to throw himself at projects until they’re finished. “I just don’t know if I can-” Alex cuts himself off. “I’d make a shitty agent, huh? Can’t concentrate when I’m worried.” He swirls his coffee, looking anywhere but at Steve.

“Want to know a secret?” Steve can’t bring himself to smile. “I’m not so great at that, myself.”

“That’s not a secret,” Aex informs him, voice still sleep-rough. His hair is standing up all over, exactly the way Bucky’s used to in the mornings.

Steve, for one horrible, vertiginous second, thinks he’s going to cry. The breath catches in his throat, but then he’s speaking, words he’s never said to anyone but Natasha, and only then in passing, pouring out. “It’s my fault. All of this,” he says, can hear himself saying. “I never- we never looked for him. I was so sure he was dead. I felt like someone had just- just reached in and taken a piece of me, I was so sure. Peggy- Agent Carter, she got me through it. Gave me something to focus on, but I don’t think she knew it was- it was revenge.”

He can’t really believe it, that this all happened more than eighty years ago. It feels like it was yesterday, still, despite the years he’s had to learn otherwise. “I don’t think she really- I loved her too, you know. She’d have been so angry to see how long Hydra lasted, after all we did.” He takes a deep, shaking breath, frantic at the pressure of it, all these words wanting to come out. He’s restless, hands clenched unconsciously into fists on his thighs, nails biting crescents into his palms. “But I was so, god I was so _angry_ he was gone. I was supposed to-”

“Shut up,” Alex says, pouring his coffee down the sink, untouched. “God, Steve, shut up, okay? Did you know that I can speak every language in the neighbourhood, and I don’t remember learning them? Somebody put them in me and they’re never going away. We were all _supposed_ to do stuff. It’s just that all I _want_ is to get into a good college, and I want Dad to come back and not wake up in the middle of the night screaming again. That’s it.”

Steve can feel himself gaping. He’s been shot enough times that he knows exactly what it feels like. He thinks this might be worse. “I-”

“I shouldn’t have to tell you this!” Alex snaps, throwing his mug into the basin so hard Steve can hear it crack, but Alex doesn’t pause. “I’m not him! You’re the one who’s always leaving, okay? Maybe think about that for a second before you go telling me about how you’d have burned down the world for him or some shit. I’m not him. Fuck.”

Alex looks at the shards in the sink, looks at Steve, then slams his way back into his bedroom, thud of the door reverberating in the silence.

At the window, one of the cats meows, wanting to be let in to be fed. Steve jumps. He remembers to breathe as he opens the window, feeling every second of all the years he’s been alive, weight of it grinding in his joints. He leaves it open, after, staring out at the warren of alleys below their apartment, thinking he really hasn’t come that far, all things considered.

The space where a tooth should be has never filled in. Steve wonders if thinking he was picking his battles these days just means that he’s been too much of a coward to fight for things he’s afraid to lose.

-

Bucky comes home near exactly midnight, three days later.

Steve has one of the cats on his lap, absently stroking it while he scans through some files on his phone he’s been neglecting, but his heart’s not in it.

The cat notices first, darting towards the window just as it opens, purring up a storm.

Bucky pauses just inside, crouched down to thread his right hand through her thick fur, making an odd little clicking noise the cat seems to love. It’s a degree of familiarity Steve has completely overlooked, or more accurately, hasn’t been around to witness.

Bucky looks over at him through the fall of his hair and tries for a smile, mouth curling up on one side. “You look like shit,” he says, left hand pushing his hair back behind his ear. Easy. Natural.

Bucky looks nothing like he used to. There’s something more present about him now, a kind of groundedness that Steve can’t really put his finger on, but he thinks maybe it’s because he just hasn’t been looking in the right places. Somewhere down the line, Bucky started getting better, and Steve didn’t.

For all that Bucky will never be able to deal with laboratories, for all that he still sleeps like he’s waiting for something and will probably cut his own hair forever, he’s come back whole enough that Steve feels cracked in comparison.

“Yeah,” Steve rasps. “I’m not doin’ so good, Buck.”

Bucky crosses the living room in three steps, dropping his bag where it falls. For a second, Steve thinks he might be going in for a much deserved slap upside the head, but Bucky just grabs him, pulls him right off the couch, more a headlock than anything else, dragging him close. “You’re a fuckin' idiot, Rogers,” he says, shaking him a little. “‘S harder when you can’t just pick a target and take it out, huh?”

“Jesus,” Steve mutters into his chest, feeling the hard ridge of scar where skin meets metal through the drag of his shirt. “I’m glad you’re back.”

Bucky fists a hand in Steve’s hair, drags his head up, forcing him to make eye contact. “Me too, jackass,” Bucky says. “But this isn’t over.”

“Can we fight about it tomorrow?” Steve asks, closing a hand around the back of Bucky’s neck, feeling the chill of night air still clinging to his skin.

“If I wasn’t already so damn nuts-” Bucky’s fist tightens, grip on Steve’s hair just on the edge of too hard. “Promise?”

“Knock down, drag out,” Steve says, “I swear to god.”

“About damn time,” Bucky says, before he kisses him, all teeth. “You’re not gonna break me,” Bucky mutters into his jaw, all of him pressing up against Steve, still holding him steady. “Nastier people’n you have tried.”

Steve thinks he might be laughing, but all that’s coming out is soundless breath, chest too tight for his lungs. “I’m-”

“Don’t you dare apologize,” Bucky snaps, jaw clicking shut, clenched tight for a second before he keeps speaking. “Not for that, anyway.”

Steve really is laughing now, a desperate, slightly hysterical rasp of relief, adrenaline washing through him, leaving his skin over-stimulated, too tight for his bones. “Don’t worry,” he says, leaning into Bucky’s grip. “I got plenty.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything at all to that, just quietly untangles his fingers from Steve’s hair, pushing him just slightly away. “Yeah, pal,” Bucky tells him. “Eighty years, you ain’t changed all that much.”

-

The shower runs.

Steve listens to it in a stupor on the couch, looking around the living room with the kind of attention he never usually gives it. There’s nothing glaringly out of place; it’s just home. He just wonders when he started taking it for granted.

Bucky emerges from the bathroom in a towel, casually slung low over his hips, and Steve knows, he knows intimately that Bucky isn’t as bony as he used to be, but now he wonders what else there is about him that’s changed while Steve hasn’t been looking.

He wants to touch, but can’t quite bridge the gap.

“So are you coming to bed, or what?” There’s a bruise blossoming along the curve of this right shoulder. Steve hasn’t got words for how badly he wants to watch it heal.

“Yeah,” Steve says, hoarse.

Bucky smiles, ever so slightly, just a small twitch of his lips, and Steve can’t move, can’t speak, can’t do anything but watch as he approaches. “You all talk now?” Bucky asks. “That’s not like you.”

Steve swallows. “Didn’t want to ruin the moment.”

Bucky laughs at him. It’s small, rough, the way all his laughter is, but it’s still real. “You know, I remember you telling me I was taking all the stupid with me to London,” he says, approaching slowly, eyes pinned on Steve. “Sometimes I remember you being so small the army wouldn’t take you and I think- I remember thinking what a good thing it was that you wouldn’t get chewed up by a fight a lot bigger’n you.” He stops, crouches down in front of Steve and lays a damp hand on one of his knees, hair in a sodden twist, away from his face. There’s a thread of grey in it, sweeping back from his forehead on one side. There are faint, faint lines in the creases of his eyes which Steve can’t stop noticing.

“Sometimes,” Bucky continues, “I’m not sure that was real or if someone just left a space and I made it up to fill the gap.” He grips down, hard, right hand warm and strong. “But I remember every second of the last ten years, alright? Doesn’t matter so much anymore that there’s stuff I’ll never get back.”

Steve remembers it so, so well. The moment he watched Bucky walk away and almost let him go without a last touch, to remind him to come home. The last thing they said to each other before Steve finally found a way to go to war. “God, I loved you so much it hurt to breathe,” he says, finally, finally reaching out to grab him, fingers closing around the curve of Bucky’s right arm, thumb skirting the edge of the bruise. "And I still couldn't stick around for your last night if there was any chance-"

“You should come to bed, Steve.” Bucky stands slowly, still carrying a roadmap of old scars, dragging Steve up with him. “Turns out coming outta retirement’s not the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

Steve can’t hold out any longer, can’t resist the tidal pull Bucky has always had on him. Steve slips his arms around him, breathing him in. “Gimme a sec,” he mutters into the curve of Bucky’s neck.

Bucky lets out a long, shuddering breath, all of him warm and present, water soaking through Steve’s shirt only turning cool on his skin. Bucky’s left hand skims up under the hem of his shirt, smooth fingertips pressing divots in above where an exit wound would have been, if Steve ever scarred anymore. His body doesn’t hold onto things the way Bucky’s does, but they both remember.

Bucky’s hand travels down, slow, deliberate drag of digits catching at fabric and skin alike. “On second thought,” Bucky says slowly, “we don’t have to go anywhere.”

Steve leans back, knowing exactly where he’s going to fall, taking Bucky with him. “Still want to fight about it?” he asks, running a fingernail down the line of his vertebrae as Bucky rolls his hips, settling back on top of him, legs sprawling off the side of the couch.

Bucky props himself up on his elbows, looking down at Steve, darkness making hollows of his eyes. “When it matters, yeah,” he says quietly, and then nothing else, because Steve has to tilt his head back for the scrape of his teeth, the press of his lips, and it’s enough for tonight that they’re both here and neither of them are broken.

-

Steve leaves Bucky sleeping. He’s not usually the last one up, but there’s relief in knowing that even after whatever Natasha asked him to do he’s slept through the night.

It’s six in the morning when Steve makes the call, sitting on the fire escape, listening to dogs barking in the distance. “Hey Nick,” he says, when Fury answers the phone.

“Cap.” Fury sounds neutral as always, direct line tinny this morning. Steve should know- wants to know- where he is, but he realizes, after a long second, that he can let it go.

Steve picks at the peeling paint of the railing, watching flakes of anti-rust coating coming up under his fingernails. “I think I need some time off.”

There’s a long pause. The line crackles between them, faint with distance. “Approved, Captain,” Fury says, something Steve can’t identify in his voice. “I’ll pass it on.”

“Thanks,” Steve says. The functional ironwork of the balcony is beginning to show through under the paint in a pattern, Steve scratching concentric circles into the paint.

Fury takes a breath as if to say something, then doesn’t, as if waiting for Steve to fill the gap. He doesn’t. Fury chuckles faintly in his ear, and Steve can imagine his face, inscrutable, but not nearly as unreadable as he thinks he is. “Take care, Rogers. We’ll need you back someday.”

Steve rounds out his ad-hoc doodling with a little star, following an existing crack. “I know,” he says, feeling lighter when he hangs up.

Bucky sneaks up on him a little while later, sitting down next to him, hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder. “So,” he starts, “what now?”

“I don’t know,” Steve tells him. “Breakfast, I guess.”

“Smartass.” Bucky slings an arm around his shoulders, and for a second, Steve feels sixteen again, already knowing, deep down, that the growth spurt that stretched Bucky out, making him all too-long limbs and too-big feet, wasn’t ever going to settle into his own little body. Bucky’s left hand clenches just a bit too tight before he loosens his grip. “You got anyone to beat the tar out of who can give as good as you?”

“Not really,” Steve says. “Could sure use an alien invasion right about now.”

Bucky huffs, running a hand through his hair. “It’s a good thing I’m a mess too,” he says again, “or I’d be so fucking mad at you.”

“Who says there’s not room for both?” Steve mutters, leaning in.

“Sooner or later you’re gonna have to quit beating yourself up,” Bucky says quietly. “Okay? You promise me you’re gonna fucking try, or I’m- I dunno, kicking you out. That’s what people do on TV.”

“My name’s on the-”

“Steve,” Bucky says, so quiet Steve almost struggles to hear him, “I can’t watch you do it anymore.”

“What about you?” Steve asks, thinking of how long it took Bucky to say yes to Natasha, how hard it’s been watching him come to a decision neither of them really knows the ramifications of. “Are we just going to switch places?”

“No.” Bucky grips him tighter, just for a second. “She needed- she asked me, but I almost said no. I should have, maybe, but I didn’t, so here we are.” He sighs, letting his arm drop. “Point is, I didn’t _need to_. That’s why I said yes.”

“Yeah.” Steve’s hand closes over the railing, knuckles going white as he squeezes. “You think- think Alex’ll get sick of me being around all the time?”

“Jesus,” Bucky says, startled. “That’s definitely the least of our problems.”

Steve can’t hold in the laugh. Once he starts, he can’t seem to make himself stop, leaning forward until his head is on his hands, folded over the stupid, rusting railing of their fire escape. He laughs until his eyes are wet, Bucky’s hand settling on the back of his neck, cool and metallic, thumb stroking over the ridges of bone.

“Hey,” Bucky’s hand goes still, “you’re alright. You’re in Brooklyn. It’s twenty-twenty-five.”

Steve takes a deep, shaky breath, feeling the deep, easy expansion of his lungs. “Think maybe we’re getting too old for this?”

“Who knows?” Bucky says. “Alex tells me I’m old all the time, so I guess he’s the expert.”

Steve laughs for real this time, pressure in his chest easing, just a little.


	3. Chapter 3

17.

Steve wakes up screaming.

He’s across the room before he knows it, skin too tight for his bones, entire body aching to run, pushing up against something huge and monolithic, shape of it fading as he wakes.

Bucky is sitting up in bed, pressed back against the headboard, watching him.

“Jesus,” Steve breathes, hands shaking. “I couldn’t- I couldn’t breathe.”

“I know,” Bucky says quietly, slipping out from under the covers. “You want some water?”

Steve nods, following him out of the room, walls just a little bit too small.

Alex is standing blearily in the hall, holding a glass. “Should I welcome you to the club?” He thrusts the water at Steve, a tiny, familiar crease between his eyebrows.

Steve thinks he might be panicking all over again at the thought that he’s woken him up, that he’s brought all this back into their lives when they didn’t need it, had reached a balance without him that didn’t include screaming nightmares at three AM anymore. “Thanks,” he says, croaks, really, taking the offering. “Alex, I-”

“It’s nice that you’re home,” Alex mutters, looking past Steve at Bucky, then back at him, eyes heavy-lidded with sleep but still alert. “Um. I have school, so-”

“Yeah.” Steve isn’t sure what to say, but he can take a wild guess. “I can’t promise this won’t happen again.”

“Good,” Alex says, ducking back into his room.

-

Steve calls Sam in the morning. Sam listens to him for a few minutes, waiting for Steve to talk himself out, but in the end, Steve doesn’t have all that much to say. “Hey,” he finishes, “remember way back when, you asked me what made me happy?”

Sam makes a noise like he’s sucking in air past his teeth. “Yeah, man. Don’t recall you had much of an answer.”

“Turns out time off’s not so good for me,” Steve tells him, eyes still gritty, sunlight pouring in the kitchen windows while coffee drips slowly down.

“Uh huh,” Sam says quietly. “Been there. I know someone, been working out of the VA in New York for a while.” Sam pauses. “I’ve got her number somewhere.”

The coffee drips, loud in the silence. Bucky is having a cigarette on the roof, probably doing his best not to listen in. Alex is at school. Steve’s hands are shaking. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I think that’d be good.”

-

Steve takes the bike uptown, even though it’s getting cold out. He’d like to think he could take the subway if he had to, but even the thought of it is too much right now. He remembers liking it, when he got back, amazed at how much cleaner it was, how it reached to almost every part of the city, but today he wants to be above ground.

It roars to life beneath him and even the familiar engine noise isn’t really enough to calm his nerves, but it does help. He zips past the tower on his way through the city, travelling further than any New Yorker would really deem acceptable for a single appointment. At least it’s given him time to decide not to back out, he thinks, finally pulling to a stop, mourning the loss of noise and movement as he takes his keys out of the ignition.

The building is pretty out of the way, a little run down. Steve looks for a buzzer and finds there isn’t one. The door swings open easily, depositing him in a foyer with a desk, subtle reminders of old disasters peppered around the walls. A plaque here. A flag standing limp in the corner.

He almost turns around and leaves, but a woman in beat-up jeans and a big sweater skids through the door behind him, faint hint of cigarette smoke clinging to her with the cold air. “Hey,” she says, smiling. “Steve, right? Sam sent you?” Steve nods, taking her in. Broad shoulders and a short, compact frame. Thick, black hair pushed back from her face, and wide, shrewd eyes. “I’m Miles Huang,” she continues. “Sorry I’m late. Before you ask, yes, my parents were really into jazz.”

“Actually, I was gonna ask how you knew Sam,” Steve says, a little nonplussed, unsure what to make of her. “Pararescue?”

“Marines.” Miles’ smile doesn’t turn brittle. If anything, it deepens as she sticks out a hand. “Think you can find it in your heart to forgive me?”

Steve finds himself relaxing infinitesimally, relieved that he’s not going to be made to prove his loyalties. “I’ll work on it.”

Miles’ handshake is firm and warm, despite having just come in from the cold. “Coffee?”

Steve shakes his head. “I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to do here,” he confesses, looking around at the room, at the faces on the walls and the way it all feels kind of hollow, a reminder of everything he couldn’t stop before it cost lives. “Do I just-“

Miles cocks her head at him, smile still in place, but something much more evaluating in her eyes. “Let’s take a walk, huh? Can’t say it’s a nice neighborhood, but I’m sure we’ve both been worse places.”

Steve looks at her, searching for a hint. “Is this a test?”

“As much for me as it is for you,” Miles tells him honestly. “Think of it as an interview. We’re gonna talk a little and see if this’ll work out. I might have another cigarette, see if it bugs you, you might ask me all the places I served to see if I’m gonna get where you’re coming from. If not, no hard feelings. Sound good?”

Steve laughs, unaccountably relieved. “Not going to make me lay back on a couch and ask me about my mother?”

“Maybe. If you bring her up.” Miles sticks her hands in her pockets, coming up with a lighter and a pack of smokes. “Ready?”

“My- my boyfriend smokes,” Steve tells her, watching for her reaction. “Sometimes. I don’t mind.”

“Great,” Miles says, unruffled. “We’re getting along already.”

Steve follows her as she walks back out the door, reminding himself to thank Sam later, even if this doesn’t work out. At least Steve’s taken the first step. “So,” he starts, falling into step with Miles’ shorter legs, “where’d you serve?”

-

Alex is home when Steve gets back, tapping busily at his laptop, frown digging an all too familiar crease between his eyebrows.

Steve feels wrung out, still, maybe even a little fragile, but he stops anyway. "Been home long?"

"About an hour," Alex answers, looking up from the screen. "How was your... thing?"

"Well," Steve says slowly, unsure how to phrase it, “it was a start, I guess.”

Alex kicks a chair at him before folding up into a weird crouch, one leg curled under him at an impossible angle. “Do you know anything about the revolutionary war?”

Steve read a lot, when he first got thawed. He’d spent hours and hours buried in revisionist history, in modern politics, in anything from before he died just to make sure it was real. He swallows. “Some. Why, think I lived through that one too?”

“You’re hilarious,” Alex deadpans. “Feel like helping me go through my notes on this? If I don’t get a decent grade on this essay I’ll drop a point.”

Steve has no idea what to do with his hands, still feeling the sting of the wind from the ride home, pushing the bike faster, as fast as he could get away with. “Sure,” he says, sitting down. “What do I-”

“You know what, it’s fine,” Alex says, hunching a little further in towards his screen. “Dad should be home soon, I’m just gonna finish up and do this later.”

Steve feels too big for his skin, clumsy somehow, even if he hasn’t been, not for years and years. “You sure?”

Alex musters a tired smile, the beginnings of Bucky’s familiar blue-black smudges manifesting beneath his eyes. “Yeah. It can wait. My back is killing me anyway.” He arches back from the screen, draping himself catlike over the back of his chair before he reaches out and closes it. “Flip a coin for dinner?”

“I thought I might learn to cook,” Steve ventures, only half-joking.

Alex blinks at him, something not quite a smile pulling at his lips. “Good thing the fire department’s on speed dial.”

Steve waits a second, wondering how long he can stretch the pause before it stops being funny and gets awkward. “Want to order pizza?”

“Phew,” Alex says. “You had me worried for a second there.”

By the time Bucky gets home looking sweaty and tousled, settled in his body in a way Steve recognises intimately, Alex has taken half a box of pepperoni to his room, leaving Steve to save the other half in the oven before settling on the couch to flip aimlessly through channels.

He’s just landed on the news, nothing much happening on the public level except the stock market, when Bucky folds himself down on the couch next to him with the rest of the pizza on a plate.

“Good day?” Steve asks, reaching out and pushing a stray bit of hair away from Bucky’s face, so he can see him better.

“Sure,” Bucky says, offering him a slice. “I dunno. I don’t really- it feels a little weird, training again, when I’m not even sure I want to keep doing fieldwork. I don’t know if I should, just because I’m-” he shrugs, right shoulder going higher than his left, “good at it.” He doesn’t seem to want to dwell on it, gesturing at Steve with the pizza in his fingers. “How did it go?”

“I’m not sure,” Steve tells him honestly. “It’s worth going back, I think. All the stuff on the internet says to give it time.”

“Well,” Bucky says, slumping down into the couch until he’s resting up against Steve, grabbing the remote without a second thought. “If there’s one thing we’ve got lots of.”

“Yeah.” Steve has no appetite. He puts his pizza surreptitiously back on the plate, adjusting himself until he’s got as much of Bucky pressed into him as he can, just breathing in the scent of him, listening for the steady in and out of his breath.

It’s easier like this, to want to stay exactly where he is. The faint panic in his chest subsides, ever so slightly. It’ll be back, he knows, but for now, it’s easier than ever to just keep his eyes open and breathe.

-

The week between appointments passes in a strange kind of blur. There’s something dreamlike about being... home all the time, for lack of a better term; the neighborhood seems both bigger and smaller, sprawling out around him when he goes out onto the fire escape for coffee in the mornings. The sounds seems more layered. Or maybe it’s just that he wasn't really listening, before, always moving too quickly to stop and take it in.

More often than not, Bucky joins him, settling in silently for his morning smoke, regardless of the weather. It’s not a stress reaction, anymore, Steve thinks. Maybe it was, once upon a time, but now it’s just a habit, something routine he does to wake up. Steve steals a drag every so often, handing over his coffee in exchange.

Alex, seventeen and nearly full-grown, but crucially not quite, sleeps like he’s making up for lost time, staggering out of his room with ten minutes to spare before school, sometimes with yesterday’s eyeliner smeared across his face, but more often just with creases from the pillow etched into his cheek, eyes slowly focusing as he mechanically chews a pop tart before leaving to catch the bus.

It doesn’t escape Steve anymore that Alex carries things on him that no teenager should really have to consider a necessity, but he’s so used to Bucky’s array of personal weaponry that he doesn’t think it should be a surprise. There isn’t any guarantee of safety in their lives, really. He’s tried so long and so hard to convince himself that it’s possible that it’s a bit like cold water steadily trickling down his back, realising he’s been looking the wrong way for years.

“How long has he been doing that?” Steve asks Bucky, once Alex has muttered his goodbyes and skidded out the door, perpetually ten minutes late, last little pulse disc inserted up his sleeve, just in case.

Bucky blinks at him, reaching for the coffee pot. “Natalia gave me a batch of those a couple months ago. They lose charge after a while.”

“Oh.” Steve wonders if this is where he’s supposed to question the practice Bucky has obviously instilled in their son of always being ready for the worst, but he can’t find it in himself to object. “Got any spares?”

Bucky grins, drinking straight out of the pot. “A few.”

Steve turns his mug between his palms, not trusting himself to grip it, lest it crack. “Do you think Alex- is he okay? It's not too- I'm around so much now, and the place isn't that big, really."

Bucky pauses, coffee pot halfway to his mouth, eyes very bright over the battered rim. “Steve,” Bucky says slowly, “what do you think we did every time you’d take off in the middle of the night?”

Steve’s phone beeps, the only alarm he’s set in years telling him to get on the bike and head uptown. Bucky is staring at him when he shoves it back in his pocket, something uncomfortably close to a flush of shame creeping up the sides of Steve’s neck. “I have to go. For my-”

“Come back,” Bucky says, advancing, coffee forgotten on the counter. He circles a hand around Steve’s wrist, squeezing gently. “When you’re done, come back. I spent too long missing you for it to happen all over again just because you’re bein’ dumb.”

“That used to be my line,” Steve breathes, steeling himself. “Do we need anything while I’m out?”

Bucky pulls away and tosses him the shopping list. “Coffee filters.”

Steve looks at it, at the tight, legible print Bucky has settled on, at Alex’s messier, loopier additions requesting strange snack food and extra UV bulbs for some reason. Steve grabs a miscellaneous pen off the counter by the phone and adds _coffee filters,_ his narrow script seeming somehow alien on the page. “I’ll be a couple hours,” he says, wanting nothing more, suddenly, than to just stay.

“I’ll be here,” Bucky answers, picking up Alex’s discarded plate and tossing it absently in the sink.

Steve takes a deep breath and goes, hand fisted around the keys in his pocket.

-

Miles sits quietly, settling on a position and keeping it. She’s short enough to sit cross-legged in the battered armchair in her office, elbows on her knees. Once she’s settled, she smiles at him, and waits.

Steve isn’t used to thinking of himself as a fidgeter, but recently it’s been hard to stay still, body feeling over-filled, too much energy and not enough space. The couch, despite being not dissimilar to the one they have at home, worn and dented from years of hard use, feels too soft and too hard, all at once. He re-adjusts himself, finally settling enough to make eye contact.

“I’m still not sure how to- what do I start with?” He laughs a little, thinking of all the things he’s probably supposed to be saying. The most that comes to mind is just a feeling of helplessness, of knowing that despite everything he did to become what he is, there are still things he’s powerless against, but there’s just no way to put that into words. He’s not sure he wants to.

“How’s your week been?” Miles asks neutrally, voice very calm.

Steve thinks about Alex, how he moves around Steve like Steve is a boulder in his stream, something he’s not used to having to navigate. It seems like- like such a trivial problem to confess to, but there’s nothing else he’s ready to say. “I’ve been thinking a lot about- about being home, I guess.”

Miles waits, clearly seeing if he’ll elaborate. Steve feels the frustrated catch of his throat, but it would feel like failure to stop now, confession half out of him, unfinished. “I- we have a kid. Alex. He’s seventeen.”

“Rough age,” Miles says. “What’s he like?”

“Independent,” Steve half-laughs, unsure why, when it’s not very funny. “He’s- he’s a lot like his dad.” Steve fidgets, still morbidly amused by how true the statement is.

Miles sits back, looking out the window at the grey sky. “You can stand up, if you want,” she says. “This is your time, you know. Walk around a little, if it makes you feel better.”

Steve can’t contain his relief. It must show all over his face, because she smiles. “Tell me about Alex,” she says. “How’s he like his dad?”

Steve paces a full circuit of her office, before he starts talking again. There’s so much contained in the question, so much he would have to explain. “A lot of this is- it’s classified,” he says, glancing at her, still sitting patiently, such a contrast to how she’d arrived for their first meeting. Steve thinks it must be something she’s learned, something about her calm suggesting she’s had to work for it too. He knows where she’s been, now. It does make it easier, knowing there’s a thread of shared experience.

“I’m legally bound not to tell a soul,” she reminds him, “but you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.”

“How much do you know about-” Steve thinks about how to phrase it, fists clenching before he forces himself to relax. “You know I was frozen, right? In the arctic?”

Miles nods, smiling slightly. “Steve, I hate to break it to you, but everyone and their mother knows that story. It’s actually kind of a minor miracle people haven’t spent years clamouring for more, but I guess there’s probably a lot of aggressive PR management from somebody on your end?”

Steve nods, sighing out a little of the tension building up in his chest, but it’s not really enough. “Yeah. Well. My- hell- it feels like I’m telling secrets.” He lowers himself slowly back onto the couch, fists curled tight. Aching for a target.

“I’m not gonna make you,” Miles says quietly. “But whatever it is you want to get off your chest, I’m here to help you deal with it. That’s all. Believe me, there’s a lot you could say that won’t surprise me.”

“Alex was- I guess made in a lab is the best way to put it,” Steve blurts out, looking out the window. Miles looks briefly surprised, leaning a bit further forward, but otherwise she doesn’t comment. Steve looks over her, eyes fixed on the far wall. “He’s, uh, he’s a clone. Of his father. It’s a long story, what happened to him. It doesn’t really matter right now, I guess, but they’re- sometimes I think I should have left them to it, y’know? I wonder what they’d have done if they didn’t have me to worry about all the time. I used to think I was keeping them safe, but-” he stops, needing a breath, needing anything to stem the tide of all this rushing out of him, like an opened vein. He has to stop. It’s not his to tell.

Miles looks thoughtful, tapping a pen against her lips while she watches him. “Okay. Let’s table that, for a second. The clone thing. I’m gonna ask you something, and you don’t have to answer it right away.” She waits, looking at him.

Steve realises she’s waiting for him to nod before she asks, so he does, shrugging. It takes everything he has not to start pacing again, nails digging deep into the meat of his palms as he braces himself.

“Protecting them. That’s something you feel you had to do.” Miles looks steadily at him for a second, before she keeps talking. “Why?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Steve wonders what talking in a circle like this is supposed to achieve, baffled and a little surprised at what she’s seized on, when there’s so much information laid bare in front of her that several government agencies would kill to have.

“Indulge me.”

Steve thinks about it, the press of fear in his chest every time Bucky would freeze at something that startled him, the way Alex had woken up in the middle of the night once a week for months when he was younger. The way the violence in the world always seemed hell bent on seeking him out, and how he’d revelled, in a way, in pushing it back. “When I- after New York, the aliens, it felt like we’d won something, like the war was finally over. But then- it’s never over. I thought- knowing I was always going to have something to fight, that was- it was something I could do. Something I was good at, that I could-” he cuts himself off. “I can’t say ‘shield’ without it being kind of dumb, can I?”

“Say anything you want,” Miles shrugs. “I think it’s kind of poetic, but I’m not the word police.”

“Fine,” Steve breathes, “Fine. That the world was something I could shield them from. But I think I just... I think I was-" He pauses, biting his lip so hard it’s painful before he forces himself to stop. “I want to punch something so badly right now,” he says, looking at his hands, imaging them, viscerally, tearing through the canvas of a bag, knuckles scraping raw on the rough surface, leaving a streak of blood behind. “When I was a kid, I used to start fights. My- Bucky’d patch me up, after, but I’d start them. It was always me.”

Miles flips her pen through her fingers, then gently puts it down, plastic clicking on the cheap wood of her side table. “Why?”

“I never thought twice about it,” he says slowly. “I’d just take people on. Bigger guys who were takin’ advantage. Then I joined the Army, and SSR and everything, and when I finally got to take a mission, it felt like- like I made sense. Like I had... a reason, I guess. And then I got frozen, and woke up here, and for a while it made sense to keep doing it.” He pauses, looking at his hands. “I didn’t know what else to do,” Steve blurts out, without thinking. “I don’t know how to do anything else.”

Miles lays her hands on her knees, looking at him with her calm, focused eyes. “Alright then. That’s something to work on.”

“That’s it?” Steve feels like he should be- like she should be looking at him differently, seeing him with all the cracks he keeps finding where no cracks should be.

“Changes don’t happen overnight.” Miles finally uncrosses her legs, sitting on the edge of her chair as she inches forward. “Think about it, okay? So, you were small, when they picked you, gave you the serum. Everybody knows that. But when you got bigger, you were still the same person. Did you get a fresh start, or a fresh body?"

“Oh.” Steve remembers it, remember so well the agony of it, then the alien feeling of full lungs, clear eyes, of hearing in stereo. He remembers Peggy asking him how he felt, and all he could say was _taller._

“Think about it,” Miles says again. “That’s all I’m gonna ask you to do.”

“Time’s up?” Steve thinks he should be shaking, with how tired he feels, but he isn’t. He isn’t.

“Time’s up.” Miles smiles at him, standing up. “Call me if you need to, alright?”

Steve nods, standing with her. He’s been sitting still, he realises, for most of the session.

It takes him longer than it should to wind his way downtown. He stays off main roads, rolling slowly through narrower backstreets, hardly seeing the road in front of him. He’s almost home when he remembers the shopping, laughing as he sticks his hand in his pocket and encounters the folded paper, all three of their handwriting right there in front of him.

She didn’t ask about Bucky. She didn’t even want to dwell on Alex, and how they all came together. Steve, under all he’s carrying, can’t say he’s not a little relieved. He hangs a left to the store, glad to have something to do that takes no thought at all, just for today.

-

Bucky has all his stuff all over the table when Steve gets back. He's tapping the fingers of his right hand on the wood in a sequential pattern and muttering a little, so Steve puts all the groceries away, waiting until he's done and has written down whatever he's working on to pull up a chair.

"Thanks." Bucky shuts his laptop, rubbing blearily at his eyes. "Did you get those nasty orange chip things Alex likes?"

"They had a two for one deal," Steve informs him.

Bucky leans back in his chair, craning his neck for a better view out of the kitchen window. "I'm done here," he says, thoughtful. Steve's heart lurches in his chest, but Bucky's not finished, pulling his right arm across his chest in a stretch. "Want to play hooky and catch a movie before school gets out?"

Steve thinks for a second, still unbalanced, unsure what to do with his limbs. “You know what I haven’t done yet? Since I’ve been back.”

Bucky sits back, looking at him with a small crease between his eyebrows. “What?”

“I think I might- you don’t have to come, but I think I want to head over to the graveyard. See if they’re all still there.” It’s probably a terrible idea, given how raw he’s feeling, and the greyed-out sharpness of the day, but Steve wants to follow this impulse, wants to go stand there again and look. He’s never really believed in ghosts, but there’s a lot he’s never quite found the time to let go of.

Bucky doesn’t say anything for a long time, but Steve doesn’t rush him. This isn’t like the first year, when Bucky would go days without speaking because he just couldn’t find the words. This is different. “Yeah, okay,” he finally says. “Let me grab a coat.”

-

Steve’s never bought a car.

It’s not something he’s ever really thought of, the fact that he’s never seen the need for a vehicle with more than two seats. He just remembers Alex fisting his little hands in his jacket and clinging to his back on the bike, or Bucky driving too fast down the avenue with Steve doing the same.

This time, he looks at it, weighs the keys in his hand, and turns to Bucky. “We don’t have a car.”

“We live in Brooklyn,” Bucky says, “and you- well, we, I guess, work for the Avengers. We could borrow one anytime.”

“So it doesn’t bother you?” Steve can’t stop spotting mistakes, everywhere he looks, can’t stop identifying his own stasis in the things he just hasn’t done.

Bucky shrugs. “Gets us out of carpooling,” he says. “Want me to drive?”

“Yeah,” Steve breathes. “Yeah, that’d be good.”

-

They take a few wrong turns, but the cemetery is still where it was when Steve was nineteen and his mother coughed out the last of her breath and he put her in the ground next to his father.

Bucky looks around, squinting slightly as he kicks the bike onto the stand, pocketing the keys before he joins Steve, walking next to him down the wide, silent path.

“Didn’t all’a these use to be wood?” He frowns, looking around. “Or metal? I don’t-”

“They didn’t let anyone put up stone,” Steve says, something deep in the pit of his stomach clenching tight. “Church said anyone could be buried here, long as they were Catholic. Didn’t want the graves to be for status.” It’s changed, bigger headstones cropping up here and there, some with modest statuary, but it still has the same air of static peace. Steve hated it then and he hates it now.

Bucky doesn’t say anything. They reach a place where the path intersects, branching off around a gentle knoll.

Steve could have come back here anytime in the last few years. But he hasn’t. It’s easy to know why, but it’s harder to explain. “This way,” he says, taking the left fork.

Their graves aren’t gone, but they’re not marked either, just two nameless iron crosses where Steve remembers wood. The names must have been illegible.

Bucky slings an arm around his shoulders, angle awkward but somehow perfect, something Steve would never have asked for, but is so, so glad to have.

“Thanks for coming,” Steve tells him, slipping an arm around Bucky’s waist, feeling the solidity of him under his clothes, real, breathing, alive.

Bucky changes his grip, hand sliding up until the very tips of his fingers are resting at the back of Steve’s neck, thumb stroking an absent pattern across the base of his skull. “I don’t know where mine are,” he says, looking around them. There’s enough of a breeze that the petals of flowers on some of the graves ripple with it. “Never really wondered. Hard enough just going forward without anyone telling me what to do.”

Steve braces for it, but Bucky doesn’t pull away, still pressed flush against him, left hand in his pocket and right skating along the wing of Steve’s shoulder blade through his jacket.

Bucky’s hand traces a warm line down the ridge of Steve’s spine, fingertips dragging. “I just kept telling myself I had to leave the dead behind if I wanted to-” he cuts himself off. “Fuck. I dunno, Steve. It sounds stupid. I guess all I’m tryin’ to say is you’re it for me, y’know? You and Alex. I just- there’s no protocol for this, watching you fling yourself at everything you can find because-” He scuffs the toe of one boot along the cracking brick path, scraping at some weeds. “I just know what it’s like, to think you might be- be doing wrong by someone, and not wanting to think about it.” Bucky takes in a deep, ragged breath, ribs expanding against Steve’s side. “Did I ever thank you? I can't- there's still so much I don't remember that it's hard to tell, but you gotta know that I'm not- just, if you need time. I know what that's like."

It's the most Steve has heard him say at once for- decades, in real time. Years and years in the time they've lived together. Steve only realises he’s shaking when he tries to speak and can’t, tries to _breathe_ and can’t, vision blurring out with the force of the sob that’s fighting its way out of him, body finally releasing months and days and years of tension, worry, deep, gut-churning panic.

Steve remembers waking up in a room listening to a game he went to with Bucky on the radio, knowing, down to his bones, that everything was wrong. An hour after he crashed a Hydra plane into the arctic, he ran out into Times Square and the world had aged seventy years without him.

Steve remembers seeing Bucky’s face again like something out of a nightmare, except nothing in him was prepared to accept it as anything less than a miracle.

Now they’re both here in a century that should never have been theirs, but Steve just hasn’t realised that fighting the particular sideways loneliness of being out of place alone wasn’t his only option anymore.

Steve didn’t even let Bucky see him cry when he buried his mother, but he’s crying now, deep, heaving, perfect sobs into his scarred shoulder and Bucky is still breathing next to him.

“Hey,” Bucky says, when it starts to get cold, “let’s go home, huh?”

Steve swallows, hard. “You’re it for me,” he repeats, words coming out hoarse. “You really-”

“I know,” Bucky says simply. “Jesus, after all this time, of course I know.”

18.

Alex turns eighteen on a windy night in late April, rain drumming against the big window in the living room, water skidding sideways into the kitchen from where Steve left the smaller one open the night before. Steve rolled out of bed and into a crouch on autopilot at the first booming thunderclap just after one and hasn’t been back to sleep, so he might as well dry out the kitchen floor.

He’s just laid a towel down when Alex comes staggering into the kitchen, blinking blearily at him. “Oh, I-” he starts, grimacing and rubbing futilely at his eyes. “Sorry, thought you were Dad.”

“He’s asleep.” Steve woke him up, shooting out of bed with a weight in his chest and habit in his bones, but Steve is better, these days, more practiced at knowing how to take a step back and breathe. Bucky went back to sleep at Steve’s urging, stealing all the covers as he curled into the warm spot Steve left behind.

Alex pauses in the doorway, then finally makes his way to the counter, leaning on  
it as he watches Steve finish up. “Good,” he says, a bit of brightness coming back to his eyes the longer he stands there. “Thunder used to really freak him out.”

One of the cats skids around the corner and headbutts Steve in the thigh before he has a chance to straighten up, so he stays crouched awkwardly down with a towel in one hand, stroking her with the other. “Did I ever tell you that he saved my life? When uh, when SHIELD went down.”

Alex is a bright kid, but looking at him now, all Steve can see is how young he is, and how very like and unlike Bucky he’s growing up to be. “No,” Alex says, “he never talks about it, how you- how he started remembering. I can guess. It doesn’t take a genius when he won’t sit with his back to the door and hates it when there’s only one exit, but he never- I remember getting debriefed too, you know. I was _six_.”

Steve stands, walks slowly over and starts wring out the towel in the sink, gripping it tight enough to almost tear, aching at the hurt in Alex’s voice, still there after all these years. “He was supposed to kill me,” Steve tells him, still twisting the towel in white-knuckled fists. “We were on the helicarriers, in DC. I was his last mission.”

Alex swallows, eyebrows creasing into an expression of dismay so familiar that Steve aches for him, for the person he is, for all he’s going to have to carry. “Well obviously he didn’t.”

“I was gonna let him,” Steve confesses, “because if- if he didn’t remember me, then I- then there was no point, and I wasn’t- I couldn’t keep fighting him, not like that.” He takes a breath, another, looking down at his own hands, towel forgotten in a sodden heap in the sink. “The carrier was going down anyway, so I just. I went down with it.” He hasn’t told anybody this, not even Sam, the very first person he saw when he woke up, sitting by him with so much faith that Steve almost staggered under the weight of it, knowing he’d been ready to let go. “He pulled me out of the wreckage. I didn’t remember, still don’t, but I _knew._ ”

“He told me you brought him back,” Alex says, voice rough, deeper than Steve has ever heard it. “That’s it.”

Steve lets his head hang down for a moment, eyes closed against the rush of memory. Bucky struggling to piece together all the fragments he kept finding. Bucky speaking in pieces, slowly stitching himself back together. “He brought himself back,” Steve tells him, sharp and insistent. “He did it himself.” Steve forces himself to look at him, look at Alex’s young face and old eyes, safe and grown at last. “He was so afraid, when Nick asked us if we could do this. He thought he was going to screw it up, but I look at you, and-”

Alex reaches across the counter and grabs him, hard, hands closing over Steve’s, splayed out to brace his weight. “Stop,” Alex rasps. “When I was six-” he swallows, hard. “When I was six, I thought I was going to- another lab, another place where people were going to- but then I ended up here, and-” Steve can feel the shaking in his hands, where there’s still gripping tight, pointed fingers curling under his palms. “Natasha told me once, when I was little, that I could leave if I wanted to, but. I didn’t. Don’t.” He shakes his head, hair falling into his eyes. “You didn’t- it’s not you who fucked us up. I came out of a- a science experiment and I’ll never know if someone- if I had a- if someone- whatever. You crashed a plane in 1945 and woke up nearly a century later. And Dad-”

“Killed more people than anyone can count or that I can remember,” Bucky says, leaning in the doorway, hair a wild mess, dark circles ever-present under his eyes. “You didn’t come back to bed,” he explains, looking from Steve to the wet patch under the window, rain still skittering against it, pre-dawn light beginning to bleed in with the orange glow of the streetlights on the sidewalk far below. “I got worried.”

Alex lets go of Steve, standing up straight again, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Is anyone going to say happy birthday?” he asks, voice thick in his throat. “Or, I guess ‘birth’ isn’t the right-”

“Happy birthday,” Steve and Bucky say in accidental unison, sleep-rough and tired.

Alex laughs. It’s not quite happy, but it’s enough. “I’m not going back to bed if you’re not,” he informs them, wrapping his arms around himself. Bucky gets to him first, pulling him against his chest like a lifeline just as Steve crosses the room. Alex reaches out and drags him in, blunt nails digging crescents into Steve’s back. He doesn’t mind. He doesn't think he ever will.

-

All things considered, it’s probably a terrible time to throw a party, but as soon as the weather breaks, Steve finds Alex blearily joining in the morning ritual of drinking coffee on the fire escape. It’s too small for three big bodies, but they fit well enough that Steve doesn’t mind the press of shoulders on either side, or the way Bucky passes Alex a mug right across Steve’s chest.

“Hey,” Steve says, once they’ve all had their first cup, “we should do something for your birthday.”

Alex squints at him. “Like what?”

Steve shrugs, shoulders brushing Alex on one side, Bucky on the other. It’s too early for Alex to really be out of bed, but Steve is happy they’ll have more time before he realises he’s late and hares off to school. “Is there anything you want to do?”

“Go on a bender and trash the apartment,” Alex says immediately. “Fly a helicopter. Go Scuba diving off the coast of Bali.”

Bucky laughs silently, smoke streaming out his nostrils, lending him an unintentionally dragon-like air. “Well, the first one’s doable.”

Alex huffs, but it’s good natured. “Promise not to be weird if I invite some kids from school?”

“We’ll stay out of the way,” Steve promises. “There’s the whole roof for us to camp on.”

Alex squints at them, leaning forward to see them both. “Seriously?”

“Go nuts,” Steve says.

Bucky gestures abortively with his cigarette. “Yeah.”

Alex smothers a smile, then yelps when he pulls his phone out of his pocket, scrambling back in the window in a tangle of limbs, skidding into his room for his bag, the mess inside just visible as he slams back out and dashes through the front door.

“Think he’ll be on time for anything at college?” Steve asks.

“Depends if it’s interesting or not,” Bucky says, stretching.

They’ve never really talked about what Alex is going to do next year, where he’ll go, what he’ll study. There’s so much to do, all of a sudden, but, Steve reflects, at least he’s here to do it.

-

So it happens that Steve ends up holding a beer on the roof with Bucky, Nat, Sam, and a smattering of anyone else who happened to be in town on the first night of May. It’s mercifully warm, breeze coming sluggishly from the river, carrying with it the faint tang of pollution and asphalt that’s particular to New York. The apartment is full of light and sound, kids sprawled over every surface, bass thumping up through the ceiling.

“Hey Rogers,” Nat says, appearing suddenly at his elbow, clinking her beer with his. “You look worried.”

“That’s just my face,” Steve quips, turning to get a better look at her. She looks more or less exactly the same as she did years ago, when they first met and he’d found her so unreadable for all of an hour before she showed him what a good colleague she’d be. It took longer for them to be friends, but he’s always glad, even after everything. “Thanks for coming.”

“Got a minute?” She asks, looking across the roof at where Bucky is talking to Sam, indicating the size of something with his hands to Sam’s interested frown.

“Always, for a friend,” Steve tells her. Sometimes, he thinks, it doesn’t hurt to say it.

Natasha’s smile deepens, creasing into the faint lines around her mouth. “You know you can take as long as you need, but there’s been some chatter about whether you’re coming back,” she tells him, suddenly serious. “I just want you to know that I have your back. But you know James has been invaluable. It’s been- we work well together, he and I.”

“Please don’t say what I think you’re about to say.” Steve’s hand feels clammy around the bottle.

“It’s ultimately not your choice to make,” She tells him bluntly. “But I wanted to put it on the table. It’s just a suit, right? It might not even be him.” She glances meaningfully at Sam, one eyebrow slightly raised. “Plenty of suitable candidates.”

Steve forces himself to unclench his hand, looking down at her from his much greater height, reminding himself who she is and what she means to him. Steve has told her so much, over the years. The last memories of their years at war. He sought her out at times, told her how he couldn’t touch him after, when Bucky came back new and different and terrifying in his paradoxical present-past state. “What do you do,” he asks her, “when- when you look at someone and it just scares the shit out of you, how much you love them?” Steve stops, wrung out, nerve endings screaming for movement, stimulus, action.

Natasha thinks for a second, taking a contemplative sip of her drink, taking her time before she answers. “I don’t think I’m the best person to ask,” she says bluntly. “But- don’t avoid looking at it until it’s just a weight you don’t know why you’re carrying.” She cocks her head, lips curling into the expression she uses when she wants people to think she’s smiling, “but just because you love someone doesn’t mean you have any right to them.”

Steve closes his eyes, swallowing. “Do you think I could come with you next time you and Bucky beat the tar out of each other?” He asks.

Natasha narrows her eyes. “Rogers. Don’t fucking ask _me._ ”

Steve wants to explain himself, but he’s sure Natasha is perceptive enough that he doesn’t need to. “Yeah, I know. I just wanted to make sure I wouldn’t be... intruding.”

“Look at you,” Nat says, patting him awkwardly on the arm. “You’re growing as a person.”

“Took me long enough,” Steve mutters honestly.

“Ha.” Natasha smiles again, a different one, small and crooked, the only one that goes all the way to her eyes. “Old dogs can learn new tricks.”

“Low blow,” Steve retorts, no heat in his voice.

-

The stragglers end up piled into a heap in the middle of the living room, couch cushions strewn with no discernable pattern among the tangle of limbs. At least one teenager is snoring like a buzzsaw, but Steve can’t tell which one.

“Think we should take a picture?” Steve asks Bucky.

Bucky nudges a foot with the toe of his boot, and it twitches. “Several,” he says. “This looks like a crime scene.”

Steve pulls out his phone and snaps a few for posterity. They skirt the dogpile and find Alex in the kitchen, perched cross-legged on the counter, sipping absently at a beer and staring at the chalkboard.

“Hey,” Bucky pokes him in the knee, leaning up next to him.

“I think I’ve got it,” Alex tells him, pointing with his bottle. “And it only took me more alcohol than any single organism should ingest.”

Bucky snorts. “How’s that working out for you?”

“I have a headache,” Alex announces gravely. “I’m contemplating throwing up.”

Steve removes the mostly empty beer from his slack fist and hands him a glass of water. “Good party?”

Alex blinks at him, “Is everyone still alive?”

Steve catches Bucky’s eye, smothering a smile. “I think so.”

“Then I’m gonna go with yes,” Alex says, and slides off the counter right onto Steve’s chest, arms slipping briefly around him and squeezing before Alex rights himself. “I,” he says, with all the dignity an eighteen year old doing his level best to get drunk can muster, “am going to bed.”

Steve watches him walk towards his bedroom for a second, the now-familiar tight clench in his gut almost welcome. It’s fear, sure, but it’s the kind of fear that comes from watching someone move onto their own path in the world, not the kind that smothers.

“Do you think that’s the drunkest he’ll ever be?” Bucky surprises him, right hand settling around the back of his neck, pads of his fingers warm and dry. Bucky shakes him, the way he used to when Steve was small, when Steve had spent too long hunched over his sketchbook. Steve reacts to it now the way he reacted to it then, leaning in, letting himself be moved.

Steve leans back, letting Bucky play with the short hair at the base of his skull, eyes slipping closed. “He’s not drunk. He just thinks he is.”

“The quest continues,” Bucky mutters, hand moving up, dragging his nails along Steve’s scalp. “We should clean up.”

“Leave it,” Steve says, waving a hand at the debris, “half of it’s probably under the pile anyway.”

Bucky laughs against Steve’s shoulder, pressing himself into Steve’s back. “Bed?”

Steve swallows. “Actually, I was going to ask. Next time you and Nat- when you go... can I come?”

Bucky doesn’t say anything for a long time, hand tight in Steve’s hair before he lets go, walks around to stand in front of him. Steve feels a chill up his spine at the absence of Bucky’s warmth, but he focuses on his face instead, the way his lips are pulling into a strange halfway-house smile, just a hint of teeth as they part. “Did Natasha put you up to this?”

“When has she ever?” Steve manages, unsure what to make of his expression. “It’s fine if you don’t want me to-”

“Yes.” Bucky says, decisive and steady, before his smile widens, eyes amused. “Think you can take me?”

Steve bursts out laughing, relief and humor crashing together until he’s pressing a hand to his mouth so as not to wake the tangle of insensate teenagers on their floor. “Bedroom’s right over there,” he manages past his knuckles.

Bucky smacks him in the chest. “Smartass.”

 _I love you,_ Steve thinks, looking at him, every difference, every new scar a reminder of what incredibly strange luck brought them forward in time together. Steve looks at the face he’s learned so well over the better part of his waking life, and thinks that maybe it matters less than he thinks it does, all the years they lost. It makes a kind of circle, all the bad things neither of them could prevent leading them to where they are right now. Steve hasn’t missed him in a long, long time.

-

“Well, _one_ of you is going to have to throw the first punch.” Nat taps a finger against her lips, smirking. “I mean. I could stand here watching you stare at each other, but at some point I do have to get to work.”

“Give it a minute,” Steve says, looking across the training mat at Bucky, standing just ever so slightly stiffly, weight distributed to compensate for the arm, fingers loose and curled.

“Don’t look at me,” Bucky mutters, “she always tries to choke me with her thighs. It’s a hell of an icebreaker.”

“I could be persuaded,” Steve tells him, shrugging.

“It’s a good thing you’re pretty, Steve,” she says, laughing at him.

“You’re not gonna hurt me,” Bucky bounces slightly, light on the balls of his feet.

Steve feels himself smiling, anticipating this, despite himself. “Is that a promise?”

Bucky narrows his eyes, cocks his head, and lunges. Steve dodges, throwing up a block, and that’s it for the next twenty minutes. It only takes him ten to realise they’re grinning. It’s only when they’re done that he sees Natasha is gone and it’s just them in the gym, collapsed in a sweaty heap on the crash mats.

“Told you,” Bucky says.

Steve rolls in, aching. “Please don’t say it’s just like old times.” He rests a hand on Bucky’s chest, feeling the warm, steady pulse of his heart, deep under the skin.

Bucky snorts. “I’d have kicked your ass.” he rolls his shoulders, lets his hands fall down to Steve’s waist, mismatched and perfect. “Present’s fine. I like it here.”

“Yeah.” Steve breathes in, sweat and metal and just the faintest hint of blood. “It’s pretty good.”

Bucky grins, a real, full-out smile with all his teeth, creasing into the corners of his eyes before his legs tighten and they’re rolling, Bucky’s hips coming up and over, hands suddenly around Steve’s wrists, pressing him down.

Bucky kissed him first, all those years ago; Steve had touched his lips and wondered at the taste of another person, the faint hint of smoke, the lasting sweetness of bad wine, then had opened his eyes to see Bucky backing away, stained red under his collar, blush creeping up into his cheeks, saying “Jesus, wine must’a gone to my head, should’a stuck to beer-”

Steve had been the one who’d pulled him back, thinking _this is just for me._

He’d been young, and selfish, but Steve has never thought that was a mistake. Bucky is kissing him again, and this time it’s better. They’re not young anymore, not uncertain, or grasping at something impossible. Steve thinks that for the first time in years, he’s not afraid of anything slipping through his fingers because he wasn’t strong enough to hold on.

-

Steve sees Miles once a week. That’s the agreed-on schedule he forces himself to stick to, that he resolutely won’t let himself deviate from, and somewhere in there, as summer breaks around them, the city coming back into its particular version of bloom, Steve starts to feel lighter.

He has a nightmare in late June, an old standby, a weight on his chest slowly pressing all the air out of his lungs, but when he goes to the bathroom to splash some water on his face, he meets his own eyes in the mirror.

There are lines in his face he doesn’t remember, but all he can think is _it’s about time._

When he goes back to bed, Bucky is propped up on his elbows, squinting at him. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Steve tells him, and it’s not a lie. “You?”

Bucky sits up, cracking his neck. “I’d kill a man for some coffee.”

Steve laughs so hard he surprises himself, last of the nightmare’s breathlessness gone.

-

“Why are you two such dorks?” Alex is already standing by the door, looking as unhappy to be in his graduation robe as Steve is thrilled to see him in it. “Photos are just evidence for later,” he says mulishly, glaring at Steve’s phone.

“I’ll be sure to disseminate them to the relevant paramilitary groups.” Steve takes another picture, doing his utmost not to smile.

“Like I couldn’t delete them in a heartbeat,” Alex mutters, crossing his arms. “We’re gonna be late.”

“We’re never late.” Bucky emerges from the bedroom in a t-shirt and old jeans, glasses balanced precariously on his nose. “You’re saying goodbye to high school forever. When we were your age-”

“People finished school at fifteen when you were my age,” Alex says, grumpily tugging at his billowing sleeves. “You don’t get to use that.”

“Indulge us.” Steve smiles, looking at Bucky standing next to Alex. “We’re old.”

“Ancient,” Alex confirms. “Prehistoric. Now can we get this over with? Natasha and Sam promised they’d try to get me drunk and Clint says I can pick a bow if I manage to stand through this whole thing.”

“And then what?” Bucky asks, straight-faced. “Life of crime?”

“You’re the worst,” Alex tells him, drawing him in for a hug.

Bucky looks at Steve over Alex’s shoulder, smiling faintly, hands bunched in Alex’s weird robe as though he can’t quite believe this is happening.

Steve smiles back and takes a picture.

**Author's Note:**

> Endless, ENDLESS thanks to everyone who's cast an eye over this, from Nanoochka, world's best cheerleader and gentle grammarian, to Magneticwave, Kvikindi, Beardsley, Dirtydirtychai and Jelly for reading full 30k drafts with enthusiasm and to Carrionlaughing for asking me what happened next after I thought it was probably finished, thereby making me finish it for real. 
> 
> Also, last but not least, I need to thank Neenya again, for your amazing art and for being a terrible enabler. Thank you.
> 
> You can find Neenya [here](http://www.neenya.tumblr.com) and me [here](http://www.febricant.tumblr.com).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * ["Good"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2312909) by [spiderfire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiderfire/pseuds/spiderfire)




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